How to Behave in a Crowd

Bordas’s intriguing first novel in English (after two in French) consists of the personal narrative of Isidore (Dory) Mazal from age 11 to 14 as he struggles to understand his family, his hometown in France, and what little he sees of the world. Dory’s quest for understanding is complicated by a tendency to take things literally, as well as by the limitations of his gifted but socially awkward older siblings: Leonard, relentlessly working on his sociology thesis; Jeremie, a talented cellist who refuses to play professionally; Berenice and Aurore, recently minted Ph.D.s adrift outside graduate school; and precocious high schooler Simone, already preparing her own biography. During summer beach vacations, each withdraws into his or her special interest; only Dory and his father go in the water. The father travels so much the rest of the year that his fatal heart attack barely interrupts family routine. To help his widowed mother through each night, Dory talks her to sleep or reads to her. He invites an internet contact to dinner as a possible suitor, but the siblings mock their guest. After multiple attempts to run away from home, Dory finds that the more he gets to know people, the less he understands. His German teacher, Herr Coffin, suggests that intellectual and emotional experience, in art at least, are mutually exclusive. Bordas’s novel, with its humor and sadness, beauty and bluntness, youthful perspective and mature insight, proves otherwise.