THE USUAL DESIRE TO KILL

It's possible that another performer could make this delicious audiobook more fun than Harriet Walter has, but hard to see how. "The usual desire to kill" is the emotion felt by two English sisters who are trying to cope with their aging and blithely infuriating parents who have moved themselves to a ramshackle stone house in rural France. Walter's astringent delivery is deadpan funny and so skillfully judged that even the occasional llama in the kitchen seems plausible. Barnes, a playwright, gives their actor daughter a marvelously apt subplot involving King Lear, while at home their dotty mother lies about a needed hip replacement and their father tends chickens and pretends he can't hear his wife. It's mad fun, but also far more than skin deep. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2025]