‘Hilarious and heartbreaking. Barnes’s dialogue is pitch-perfect and her characters dance off
the page and straight into your heart’ Monica Ali An often hilarious surprisingly moving
portrait of a long-married couple seen through the eyes of their wickedly observant
daughter—for fans of A Man Called Ove and The Royal Tenenbaums . 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 food dating back to 1983. Miranda’s father is a retired
professor of philosophy who never loses an argument. Her 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.” A wry propulsive exquisitely observed story of a singularly eccentric
family and the sibling rivalry generational divides and long-buried secrets that shape them.
This is an extraordinary debut novel from a seasoned playwright with a flare for dialogue and
in the end immense empathy.
