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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