I'm actually still pretty in touch with what it felt like to be a teenager (have I mentioned I thought it was horrible?), I have powerful sense memories of that time. Writing in his perspective was no harder than writing in his mother's. "Coming of age" sounds like such a walk in the park, but it's actually a pretty horrifying time. The challenge was to write an interesting story, to make Isidore and his family compelling. Coming of age is something we've all had to do, and it's natural to want to see how other people (even fictional characters) manage it. I know a lot of peopele say there have been enough of them, but to me that's like saying there have been enough love stories or crime stories. The coming of age story has always been interesting to me. Perhaps I knew this before I started writing the book, and just needed an excuse to write from that 11-year old perspective.
I thought teenage English would be "easier," but of course, that's not how it works. Can you talk about the decision to make a young person the narrator and protagonist of this story? What were some of the challenges you faced when writing from this perspective?Ĭamille Bordas: At first, I thought I was writing from a child's perspective because I was writing this book in English, which is a third language for me, and I didn't have the confidence to use it to write in the voice of, say, an Emeritus Philology Professor or something. Still, by the end of the novel, we discover that he served as confidante in many of his relationships. He’s also like an outsider in his own family, as well as at school. Superstition Review: Izzy is the youngest of six kids.
I’m grateful to have had this exchange with her.” In this interview Camille Bordas talks about coming of age, characters creating themselves, and parents being spies/secret heroes. Camille writes in such a personal, playful way. Of the process she said, “Camille Bordas’ novel How to Behave in a Crowd is at times dark, at times humorous, and always a pleasure to read.
This interview was conducted via email by Interview Editor Lian Ammerman. “The Thrill of Writing,” an Interview with Camille Bordas
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