01630nam a22002297a 4500 251014b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d 9781668062838 tbs eng Barnes, Camilla 26168 author The usual desire to kill / Camilla Barnes. New York, NY : Scribner, 2025. 249 pages ; 22 cm. Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of decades-old food. Miranda’s father is a retired professor of philosophy who never loses an argument. Miranda’s mother likes to bring conversation back to “the War,” although she was born after it ended. Married for fifty years, they are uncommonly set in their ways. Miranda plays the role of translator when she visits, communicating the desires or complaints of one parent to the other and then venting her frustration to her sister and her daughter. At the end of a visit, she reports “the usual desire to kill.” This wry, propulsive story about an eccentric yet endearing family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue. Families Fiction 22172 Parent and child Fiction 24093 Family secrets Fiction 23679 Interpersonal relations Fiction 24021 Psychological fiction 22456 Romance fiction 22778 lcc 0 0 lcc 0 0 TBS TBS 2025-10-14 0 P-EN BAR B07692 2025-10-14 1 2025-10-14 1 5049 5049