Camilla Barnes has turned her eccentric family into literary gold with The Usual Desire to Kill, a book that’s drawing comparisons to Nancy Mitford, per telegraph.co.uk. Inspired by the debut novelist’s philosopher father, Jonathan Barnes, and her mother, Jennifer, who once famously castrated a llama, the 55-year-old Paris-based theatre veteran has spun a darkly funny novel that’s already making waves across the UK, Europe and America.
Barnes’ story, which is as quirky as it is captivating, began as a play, fuelled by tales of her parents’ 50-year marriage playing out in a crumbling French manor near Poitiers. Her father, a pedantic intellectual, tends to a menagerie of llamas, ducks and cats, while her mother rules the roost with a mix of martyrdom and thrift—handing out expired cat ointment for her daughter’s eye infection.
“My mother really did cut the balls off a llama,” Barnes admits with a cackle over coffee by the Canal St-Martin. “I couldn’t invent something as awful as that.”
Encouraged by her uncle, Booker Prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes, Camilla transformed the play into a novel in a whirlwind month in August 2023. The result is a hybrid gem—part narrative, part theatrical dialogue, peppered with emails and letters—that follows Miranda (a stand-in for Camilla) as she navigates her parents’ passive-aggressive rituals, from “drinkies” to Scrabble showdowns. Though fictionalised, the book brims with real-life echoes: her parents do live in France with llamas and her father is a philosopher.
“The truth is tiny,” she says, “and heavily embroidered.”
The novel’s charm lies in its sharp dialogue—“the music they speak,” as Barnes puts it—and its bittersweet unravelling of family dynamics. Published by Scribner on April 10 for £16.99, it’s already a Barnes & Noble “Discover” pick in the US, sold at auction in multiple territories, and earning praise for its wit and nostalgia.
Her parents’ verdict? Dad called it “very good” but quipped they’re “all total s—s” except Camilla and her daughter. Mum, true to form, sidestepped it until the cheese course: “Did it upset you?” Camilla asked. “No, not really,” came the stiff-upper-lip reply.
With a play adaptation in French and a sequel in the works, Barnes—niece of a literary giant, daughter of a philosophical titan—has carved her own path. And yes, that llama story? It’s the real deal.
- Featured image: Camilla Barnes/Patrick Gaillardin
