Camille Bordas is the author of two previous books in her native French. How to Behave in a Crowd is her first novel written in English. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, her nonfiction in Chicago magazine. She teaches creative writing at the University of Florida MFA program in Gainesville.
"How to Behave in a Crowd joins the league of novels about adolescence persuasively told by adolescent narrators. 'Who would care for a novel about us?' asks one of Dory's siblings. The answer is: everyone." ----The New York Times Book Review
"Smart, charming . . . . Izzy is a wonderful narrator,
keenly observant, but also inherently caring and inadvertently
astute, ironic, touching, or flat-out hilarious." --Heller
McAlpin, NPR "A sharp, sweet, and wry coming of age story. . .
. About pretentious people but never pretentious, the story unfolds
with humor and compassion." --Kathleen Rooney, Chicago
Tribune "A deeply satisfying work of literary fiction."
--Booklist (starred review) "Intriguing. . . . in its humor
and sadness, beauty and bluntness, youthful perspective and mature
insight." --Publishers Weekly "An utterly charming book--moving,
witty, funny, and especially wonderful for the mature
kind-heartedness of its view of humanity. Camille Bordas is an
invaluable new voice." --George Saunders "In How to Behave in
a Crowd, six brilliant French siblings, reeling in the wake of
their father's death, ask themselves a question, straight from
Montaigne: 'How should we live?' To answer it they write novels,
complete multiple PhDs, analyze almost everything, joke about
everything else. Even if Salinger's Glass family moved to rural
France I doubt they would conjure a tale this funny, humane and
slyly philosophical. Camille Bordas' first novel in English is
charm itself!" --Zadie Smith
"A tender, smart, and very funny novel. Isidore and his world are
wonderfully particular and eccentric, but we will all recognize the
painful-yet-thrilling experience of being on the cusp of adulthood.
Bordas perfectly captures the special beauty of an adolescent: a
brain as smart as any adult but with a heart uncorrupted by
experience." --Dana Spiotta "Camille Bordas will enchant her
readers with this brilliantly dark story of an eccentric family
negotiating with loss. She is J.D. Salinger as a French woman--what
more could you want?" --Catherine Lacey "Camille Bordas is
completely brilliant. Soon she will lay waste to the sad landscape
of American letters." --Jesse Ball "At once tender and
heartbreaking, yet also sharp and funny, How to Behave in A
Crowd is a brilliantly rendered and utterly charming story
about the idiosyncrasies and struggles of coming of age. This
smart, gripping, witty novel is an absolute must-read." --Yasmine
El Rashidi
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