The Usual Desire To Kill by Camilla Barnes

The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes

256 pages

Published April 2026 by Scribner

Publisher’s Summary: 

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.

My Thoughts:

I recently went to pick up library holds that had come available and was surprised to find this title among my books. I had no recollection of requesting it, no idea who might have recommended it, and no idea why I would have requested a book about killing. I was only a few pages into the book when I became even more confused. This certainly didn’t feel like a book that was headed down the path of becoming a murder mystery. So, I did something I almost never do – I looked at the front flap to get the book description. And then I proceeded to race through this book. 

This is the story of how two people who should never have been together maneuver thru a long marriage and the effects that has on their children. Barnes explores marriage, sibling rivalry, truths behind shifting memories, and family secrets as well as examining the decisions people make in life, the long-term effects of those decisions, and how well one truly knows the people they love. 

One reviewer called it "tragicomic" and I think that's the perfect description. Barnes' writing is often witty and I found myself chucking frequently. But there is a sadness throughout that builds throughout the book. Miranda's father suffers the aftereffects of WWII and they both suffer the aftereffects of depression that followed it in England. That poverty has turned both parents into hoarders of a sort, which is both sad but also humorous in Barnes' hands. But life has hardened them as well. Which makes visiting them hard on Miranda, who writes to her sister, after one visit, that she left with "the usual desire to kill." 

I believe, in retrospect, that this book came to my attention via The New York Times Book Review and that I immediately requested it from my library just to avoid having to take the time to record it into my TBR list. I must say, it’s not a half bad way to get yourself to read something you might otherwise have put off. That would have been a terrible shame in the case of The Usual Desire To Kill. 

Life: It Goes On - April 19

Happy Sunday! It's another chilly weekend here after a week with some very warm temps. I need to have the chilly days fall during the week and the warm days on the weekend! Although that would have tempted me to head to the nursery even sooner to start getting plants. This week, though, this week I'm going! The Big Guy is already resigned to the fact that the kitchen table may be covered with plants for a week or so while I wait for us to be closer to frost free. 

Struggling this week with energy, which is a good thing for my reading but a bad thing for everything that needs to be done around the house. I did end up working on taxes every night through Wednesday, battling through my dad's until the last minute. Strange to think that I won't have to do his any more, but tax time will be so much less stressful. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished The Guncle and started Jess Walter's So Far Gone. Next up I have Allen Levi's Theo of Golden.

Watched: The Voice, plenty of Nebraska softball and baseball, an episode of The Gentlemen, and the penultimate episode of season four of Bridgerton. I had really thought that I wouldn't watch season four, but desperate for something to watch one evening, when I had the television to myself and wanted something familiar, I started it. Of course, I had to finish it, which I'll do Wednesday when BG heads off to his weekly guys' night. 

Read: I finished Andrew Sean Greer's Less is Lost and I'm about halfway through Elise Meyer's That's A Good Question, I'd Love To Tell You. 

Made: Realized Monday that our food plans for the week started with meals that started with the letter "P" so I decided to see if we could go the whole week with main courses that started with "P." Pasta, potatoes baked, potatoes fried (we always bake and entire bag of potatoes at once), pad thai, and paninis. Last night I even had a pancake (sweet potato) when we went out to eat! 

Enjoyed: Dinner with old friends last night. Well, I should say we enjoyed the time with them, although the experience left something to be desired. Ever been to a restaurant that's essentially out of beer? 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: Continue to have some paperwork that needs to be done, then the weather will determine what I work on for decluttering. Forty Bags In Forty Days flew by without my even starting it, but I'd still like to do it on my own - just need to figure out the starting date. 

Thinking About: What I want to do with plants outside this season. I've got some new planters that will need different things and some old ones that need to be tossed, so it will be fun to shop this year. 

Feeling: Worried. My old cat has been feeling so good these past few weeks and we had become certain that the problems she'd faced had been resolved. But the past few days, she's been having trouble again and I'm sure a visit to the vet is in our near future so see if we can get her back on track. 

Looking forward to: Headed out the door in a few minutes to have lunch with friends, then next weekend is our siblings dinner (not this weekend has I had thought). 

Question of the week: Are you a gardener? If so, food plants, flowers, or both? We will plant tomatoes, as always, but are thinking about other veggies we can try this year. Will probably try some beans but not sure what else. 

The Correspondent

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Read by Maggi-Med Reed and a full cast

8 hours, 36 minutes

Published April 2025 by Crown Publishing Group

Publisher’s Summary: 

“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn't there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one's life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters-to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has-a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

My Thoughts: 

If by some miracle, you have not yet read this book, I cannot stress to you enough how important it is that you listen to it. I’m sure it’s wonderful in print but it is so enhanced by the audiobook version. Each of the people with whom Sybil has correspondence is read by a different person, bringing so much realism to the book, particularly because each of them does such a terrific job. Every letter here is read exactly in the way you would imagine the writer would be saying it in their head as they wrote – with humor, with sadness. 

I'm a huge fan of well done epistolary novels so I knew from the beginning that I would read this one; I just wondered what it was about the book that made so many people say it was the best book they read last year. What made it different? The answer is that this book isn't one sided, it isn't just the correspondence between two people. It is the full story of Sybil's final years, a woman who has always believed that writing letters was the best form of communication, who gradually accepted email as an acceptable form of communication. Through all of these communications, we are able to watch a woman in her seventies still grow and change. Sybil is able to mend and build relationships, to face her biases, and to seek forgiveness. Readers see a  highly intelligent woman who comes off as a bit crotchety and set in her ways, soften, allow herself to have fun, find love, and face the coming end of her life. 

Throughout, Sybil continues writing a letter that goes on for years. When the truth of who that letter is written to is revealed, it is heartbreaking and explains so much about why Sybil became the woman she became. 

Is it likely to be my favorite book of the year? I don't think so. I'd certainly recommend it, though and it may well make my top ten, certainly in audiobooks. I'd also highly recommend it for books clubs, touching as it does on so many themes. 

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

The Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

512 pages

Published June 2024 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher’s Summary: 

Same As It Ever Was showcases the consummate style, signature wit, and profound emotional intelligence that made The Most Fun We Ever Had one of the most beloved novels of the past decade. Featuring a memorably messy family and the multifaceted marriage at its heart, Lombardo’s debut was dubbed “the literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler” (The Guardian) and hailed as “ambitious and brilliantly written” (Washington Post). In this remarkable follow-up—another elegant and tumultuous story in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and Celeste Ng—Lombardo introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters, this time by way of her singularly complicated protagonist.

Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.

She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.

Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. 

My Thoughts: 

I’m just going to honest up front about this one. Same As It Ever Was was a tough read for me, both in the content and in actual act of reading it. At over 500 pages, it was going to take a while for me to get through, even if it had really gripped me. It did not. I felt like I was slogging my way through mud. 

There wasn’t a single character in this book that I didn’t find annoying in some way by the time I was finished with it. I often found myself skimming, feeling like things were just being rehashed, and felt like the book could easily have been 100 pages shorter and still conveyed the messages that Lombardo intended. Had it all ended in a way that I found satisfactory, it would have redeemed itself to some extent. It did not. While I appreciate a book that doesn’t put a bow on it and everyone lives happily ever after, I wasn’t entirely sure that any of these characters was going to be truly happy ever. 

But Ron Charles, of The Washington Post, said of this book: 

“Lombardo’s witty, sympathetic take on motherhood exudes the sharp scent of fermented apple juice and a full diaper… Lombardo has such a fine eye for the weft and warp of a family’s fabric. She understands the chemistry of that special epoxy of irritation and affection that keeps a marriage glued together. One finishes Same As It Ever Was with the satisfaction of knowing this complicated woman well — and the poignant disappointment of having to say goodbye.”

Was this merely a case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me? Possibly. But I don’t think so. I think, for me, this was simply the wrong book. 

Life: It Goes On - April 12

Happy Sunday! I would like to announce that I got 3 reviews scheduled yesterday! I'll admit, I kind of cheated and did books I've read more recently so that it was easier to recall them to write about them. Now, just 9 more to go...except that I'll finish at least two more books before I get all of those written. 

With my cat sitting duties done and a warm week ahead, I may be spending more time outdoors this week, prepping garden beds, setting out furniture, maybe even doing some painting. I've always said that summer is my favorite time of year, but I actually think it may be spring, when everything is so bright, the trees are blooming and I can get my hands into dirt again after months of waiting. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Steven Rowley's The Guncle, which I'm about half way through. Need to get some listening done today as I have three more audiobooks checked out already. 

Watched: Another episode of Wednesday. We're not enjoying this season as much as we did season one; it feels too convoluted and it's definitely more gruesome. 

Read: I'm reading Andrew Sean Greer's Less Is Lost (in 2018 I read and reviewed Greer's Less, which I loved).

Made: It was all about easy meals this week, since I was cat sitting and never got home before 6:30 to start dinner, including lemon pesto chicken and noodles. 

Enjoyed: Remember how I had underdressed to go to a baseball game last weekend? Well, I did the same thing on Friday, when we went to hear a friend do a solo gig and a local brew pub. In my defense, I had no idea they'd have him playing outside. We grabbed our favorite Chinese food, ate on their patio, were joined by a friend of the Big Guy's and the friend's wife, and got to spend time with our friend. Except being so cold, it was a good night. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: It's all about finishing up taxes the first part of this week. Still need to get my dad's finished up, which are the most complicated ones I have to do. 

Thinking About: Mattresses. Seriously, we still haven't figured out what mattress to get. I might be dragging my heels and pouting a bit now that I've acknowledged that a king-sized mattress won't fit where we like our bed to be. 

Feeling: Concerned. Between family and friends, we have so many people who are battling health issues. 

Looking forward to: The quarterly siblings dinner with BG's siblings and their spouses. 

Question of the week: I "won" some prints in an auction this past week. They are part of a group that I rather inadvertently began collecting. Now I'm beginning to think that I may have maxed out the space I have for any more, but I'm not sure I will be able to stop myself from buying more. Do you have any collections? Have you ever run out of room for them? Have you ever tired of a collection?