Loved this story about a French boy trying to make sense of his crazy family and the crazy world. Ran across the author from a fine short story she had in The New Yorker, so looked her up. This is her third novel, but the first two are in French. (She grew up speaking French and Spanish, but she has lived in the US for a while and this book was written in English.)

Looking forward to reading more by her. I was sad when the book ended!

Here’s the short story I liked: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/28/offside-constantly
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When I read the description of the story I thought of The One-in-a-Milion Boy by Monica Wood. Unfortunately, the only thing they had in common was a woman on her way to setting a record for age and that the boy was misunderstood. There were some entertaining spots but not enough to save the book from being a drag. ( )

The Mazal family are a bit clever. The older five children have each skipped numerous grades; the oldest are completing Ph.D.s before “regular” people even finish college. The youngest Mazal, however, is not like his siblings. Isidore hasn’t skipped any grades. He believes he’s not especially smart. And to be honest, he’s feeling a bit isolated, or alienated, or, frankly, just lonely. Izzy, as he wishes to be called though no one does, considers his plight and that of his siblings and parents over the course of two pivotal years between the ages of 11 and 13. Although his clever family is startlingly successful in academia, they aren’t terribly good at life. Indeed, they tend to look toward Dore (see what I mean about not getting them to call him Izzy?) as both their exemplar and guide as to how to behave with regular people. The trouble is that Isidore doesn’t feel especially adept at that himself.

Bordas writes with charm and assurance, liberally sprinkling her prose with humorous scenes and witticisms. It could become tiresome if it weren’t for the honest, even literal, perspective of young Isidore. Bordas also avoids veering toward unearned profundity, always a risk in the quirky-family novel. The tone is light even when some of the events are dark indeed. I enjoyed the writing and spending time with Isidore, though the rest of his family might be a bit much.

Gently recommended. ( )

Starts as a coming of age story with good specificity but little plot or sense of place. Then nicely pivots to an academic study of how a family reconfigures after the death of the father. This later thread saved it for me. ( )

Made you consider who you are compared to the people around you and see if someone is truly happy. A big lesson I learned from this book was that take some time to enjoy life and being young and innocent. In this book Dory's siblings are all prodigies, skipping grades focus on passions and education, and even getting their PhDs, while Dory is just an ordinary kid. He's empathic he sees emotion, he's curious and he feels as if he doesn't belong at times. However, as you see life through Dory's perspective you realize how unhappy his siblings are at such a young age spending their childhood focused on academics. In part of the book, it said that people only like the process of working on their PHDs because once they finish it feels like everything they worked towards is over and there's nothing left for them to do. A good read. ( )