A small town in France, a house full of talented children and a question that never gets old: How to live? In Ways of Living Together, Camille Bordas explores the life of a family made up of a group of talented individuals, each one smarter than the other. Here, the library is the only window to the outside world; the siblings spend their days composing symphonies, writing theses, hugging books like bricks when they are depressed or want entertainment.

Ways of Living Together focuses on Isidore, the youngest and perhaps the most 'ordinary' member of the family. As Isidore grows up among his witty siblings, he naively opens the humorous and touching pages of life and seeks answers to his questions. This is a novel about truths that are not written in books, about things we feel but cannot explain, and about emotions that cannot be put on the table with scientific theses; it is a dignifiedly ambitious novel that will not be easily erased from the mind. In Ways of Living Together, Camille Bordas skillfully describes the miracle of remaining intact in a world that is necessarily destructive.

Even if the Glass family Salinger created had settled in France, such a funny and humane, subtly philosophical story could not have been written. Bordas' novel is mesmerizing.

- Zadie Smith