Camille Bordas - "How to Behave in a Crowd"

Camille Bordas discusses How to Behave in a Crowd: A Novel.

At the Co-op

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About the book: How to Behave in a Crowd is beautifully narrated from the point of view of Isidore Mazal, the youngest of six overachieving siblings in a big, eccentric family living in a small French town. Isidore doesn't quite fit in with his precocious, emotionally stunted siblings. Berenice, Aurore, and Leonard are on track to have doctorates by age twenty-four. Jeremie performs with a symphony, and Simone, older than Isidore by only eighteen months, expects a great career as a novelist. In fact, she has already put Isidore to work on her biography. The only time they leave their rooms is to gather on the old, stained couch and dissect prime-time television dramas in light of Aristotle's Poetics.

Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation. If he is noticed at all, he is seen as the simple one—sensitive and kind—and, by contrast, almost normal. He understands things the others don't and asks questions they fear to ask. So when tragedy strikes the Mazal family, Isidore is the only one to recognize how everyone is struggling with their grief, and perhaps the only one who can help them—if he doesn't run away from home first.

About the author: Camille Bordas is the author of two previous novels in French, Les treize desserts and Partie commune. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker.  Born in France and raised in Mexico City and Paris, she now lives in Chicago.