Camilla Barnes’s debut novel, “Her Zamanki O Öldürme Arzusu,” has been published in Turkish by Ayrıntı Yayınları. Set in the French countryside among spoiled food, llamas and ducks, the novel tells the story of parents who have lived under the same roof for fifty years and express their love, anger and intolerance through ancient philosophy, tennis scores, condescension and sharp humor. Their daughter Miranda, meanwhile, observes the tensions within the family as she tries to decipher this strange form of communication. Barnes says that the family in the novel, consisting of a mother, father and daughters, was inspired by her own family, but that the story is entirely fictional. At the heart of the book is a mixture of anger, mourning, curiosity and humor arising from the inability to express the desire to love and be loved. The author says she waited until she was fifty-five, old enough not to care about her family’s reaction; the grand celebration she had hoped for did not take place. According to Barnes, humor is a liberating way to express sadness and shock. Miranda’s inability to fully understand her parents reflects the idea that we can know our parents only from our own perspective.
Why it matters
Barnes’s transformation of her observations of family life into an entirely fictional structure turns the novel into a text that opens up the relationship between personal experience and literary fiction for discussion. The author’s statement that she waited until she was old enough not to care about her family’s reaction shows that privacy and family ties were also determining factors in the book’s publication process. The use of humor as a way to express sadness and shock suggests that the harshness in the novel is not merely mockery, but also a way of coping with feelings that cannot be put into words. Miranda’s inability to fully understand her parents leaves readers with the question of why knowing those close to us does not always become mutual and complete knowledge.