He has 5 brothers and sisters: Berenice, Aurore, Leonard, Jeremie and Simone and they are all eerily smart. Not just him making commentary in his mind, there are real interactions. The story is told through Isidore's (Dory) words.

This story is unique, funny, sad and, well, real. I never said I was normal and normal is boring. Yes, it is the oddball things that reel me in from time to time. '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. The first couple of paragraphs from the book had me choosing this one as my next blog book.

I thought this book was wonderful! It has mixed reviews but I don't really care about that, I only care about what I think. 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. Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation, but he notices things the others don't and asks questions they fear to ask. 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.

She's already put Isidore to work on her biography. Jeremie performs with a symphony, and Simone, older than Isidore by eighteen months, expects a great career as a novelist. 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.

Camille bordas how to behave in a crowd