Scribner snaps up Barnes' debut novel of 'generational divides' in five-way auction

Scribner UK has won a five-way bidding war for The Usual Desire to Kill, the debut novel by Camilla Barnes.

Scheduled for late spring 2025, UK and Commonwealth rights were bought by Suzanne Baboneau, m.d. of the Adult Publishing Division, from Sarah Ballard at United Agents following a five-publisher auction. Nan Graham, senior v.p. and publisher of Scribner US, pre-empted North American rights via Nicole Aragi. Rights have already been sold in Germany, in a pre-empt, and in Italy and France.

The blurb for The Usual Desire to Kill reads: “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 1982. Her 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.

“After 50 years of marriage, they are set in their ways […] Miranda plays the role of translator on these visits, communicating the desires or complaints of one parent to the other and venting her frustration in email and text dispatches to her sister and her daughter. Thus the stage is set for a brilliantly observed, rather devastating portrait of a long marriage, family ties and generational divides and burdens.”

Baboneau said: “I was drunk with happiness – and still am – when Sarah let us know, at Frankfurt, that we had prevailed in the auction. This is a glorious novel, by turns laugh-out-loud and powerfully resonant and deeply affecting as the layers of past and present unfold. Those of us with parents of that generation know exactly how little is expressed, how much suppressed of their past lives. What I love about it, too, is how Camilla’s incisive observations have connected with so many readers in-house. It is a very special novel and we plan to make it a very special publication indeed across all formats.”

Camilla commented: “We can never know all of the truth about someone, only the part they show or that we choose to see. And yet we judge those we love, often based on misremembered childhood memories or elements of over-recited family lore. All of us, from one generation to the next, are quite sure that we are right and happily laugh at how wrong others can be. The response to the book from Scribner UK has been exciting and gratifying for me.”

Sarah says: “It’s a rare delight to read a debut novel as assured and captivating as Camilla’s, and it was a joy to engage with the responses of the publishers we met during the auction process – each of whom recognised their own experience in the very particular lives of Camilla’s fictional family.”

Barnes was born and brought up in England but moved to France when she was 20. Since then she has worked in the theatre in Paris, including in costume and set design, stage direction, production and writing.