Aurore and Jeremie didn't even back it up. Add to that Simone's choice of words: went straight, aimed, mission. First, the number of decisions that was implied, all of them transgressing my mother’s law (running naked and barefoot on the cold living room tile, grabbing my penis in public, pissing on the couch). “I saw it, and Aurore and Jeremie, we never understood what came over you, Dory.

“You went straight for the couch, stood right there on the armrest, grabbed your half- inch wang, and aimed,” Simone said. Simone said I’d pissed the couch as a toddler, after running free from our mother’s bundle of towels, just out of my bath. I could squint and forget it was even there, but then a swipe in the other direction, and the stain reappeared, darker than I remembered, like I’d just fed it.Įveryone had a different story about the stain. If I swept it one way with the palm of my hand, it almost blended in. There was a darker brown stain on our brown suede couch. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof*** 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. With How to Behave in a Crowd, Camille Bordas immerses readers in the interior life of a boy puzzled by adulthood and beginning to realize that the adults around him are just as lost. Isidore’s unstinting empathy, combined with his simmering anger, makes for a complex character study, in which the elegiac and comedic build toward a heartbreaking conclusion. 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. But he notices things the others don't, and asks questions they fear to ask. Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation. 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. Jeremie performs with a symphony, and Simone, older than Isidore by eighteen months, expects a great career as a novelist-she's already put Isidore to work on her biography. Berenice, Aurore, and Leonard are on track to have doctorates by age twenty-four.

Isidore Mazal is eleven years old, the youngest of six siblings living in a small French town. A witty, heartfelt novel that brilliantly evokes the confusions of adolescence and marks the arrival of an extraordinary young talent.

Camille bordas how to behave in a crowd