Misaimed Kindnesses and Cruelties

Camille Bordas discusses her new story collection, her writing process, and why anxiety fuels her as a person and a writer.

By Lily FelsenthalFebruary 5, 2026

• Fiction

CAMILLE BORDAS IS an expert chronicler of misfits. Her first English-language novel, How to Behave in a Crowd (2017), was narrated by preteen Isidore Mazal, the youngest and most average child in a large family of precocious geniuses; 2024’s The Material followed a group of striving stand-up comedians, each of them reckoning with discomfort, anxiety, unrequited love, reputational ruin, and all manner of other human calamity through the course of a single day.

The short stories that comprise her debut collection One Sun Only (2026) are no exception. A teenager forced to spend a miserable, rainy summer at a weight-loss camp; a prickly sister who seethes with jealousy over the attention her brother’s girlfriend receives when she discovers she’s colorblind; a self-doubting writer reckoning with her plagiarism of a student’s work—these are just a few of the protagonists Bordas follows, with pathos and humor in equal measure, as they fumble through their lives.

These stories, many of which were originally published in The New Yorker over the course of the past decade, range widely in tone and subject matter, but they are united by the profound empathy and warmth with which Bordas evokes her characters. Earlier this month, I caught up with the author via Zoom to discuss her exciting new collection, her writing process, and why anxiety fuels her as a person and a writer.

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LILY FELSENTHAL: You’ve published four novels—two in English, two in French—and this is your first collection of short fiction. When you have an idea for a story, how do you know if it’s destined to be a condensed piece or something longer?

CAMILLE BORDAS: I think I don’t really have ideas in general. I mean, as the story develops and decides to go in a certain direction, I will kind of build the ideas that the characters need to survive. But as a writer, I don’t start off with a premise or a theme that the story should touch on—I usually start with a weird thing that someone is thinking and try to pull that thread. It happened once that I wrote a novel and it ended up being a story. I spent three years on a novel and I was really disappointed with it; I realized the only thing that interested me was this one character and this particular job that he had, and so I wrote a story from his perspective. But usually I kind of know what I’m doing in terms of is this long or short form?—I know it pretty instantly from the kind of problem the narrator has. If the problem is very clearly and quickly there, I’m like, That’s going to be a story. And if the problem takes a little time to arise, I’m like, Okay, this sounds like a more complex web of things to untangle.

I’ve read in a few of your previous interviews that you don’t usually know the ending of something while you’re writing it. Does that apply to short fiction as well as novels? Did the endings to any of these stories surprise you when the ideas arrived in your head?

There’s a lot that surprises me as I go. For instance, in the story “Only Orange,” the narrator is a somewhat unhinged sister who’s a little bit annoyed with her brother. And at some point it comes up that she has a daughter—I didn’t know she had a daughter. I’m surprised by small things that turn the story suddenly—not completely on its head, but that give you this slight new angle on it. Same with “The Presentation on Egypt”: I thought it would be narrated by one character the whole time, but that character ended up dying immediately, so then I realized the story is more about the aftermath of his suicide. But the endings themselves, they don’t really surprise me. There’s a point, usually when I reach the last third of something, when I kind of start to see something in the distance like—This is what I’m writing toward. And it’s never a big surprise; it kind of feels inevitable. I try to honor the logic of the characters and the situations they put themselves in, but I also want it to be slightly surprising.

I like what you said about following the logic of the characters—that moment in “Only Orange” feels so organic to the way the story’s structured, even though it comes in pretty late. It’s in keeping with the character’s consciousness: that’s not something she would necessarily think to say.

She’s not thinking about her daughter that much during that vacation.

Exactly. Do you feel like you have short story writers or specific stories that you consider particular inspirations or influences?

There are a lot of stories and writers that I love, but I don’t know if I would call them influences or if they’re necessarily people I try to emulate. For instance, I love Rebecca Curtis, but I would never write what she writes—she has her own crazy world. I love Saunders, but Saunders is Saunders. When my first book came out in English, a lot of people talked about Salinger, and at the time, I had in fact never read his stories. I read Catcher in the Rye in translation when I was a teenager, but I read the stories much later. So it’s not that I find those stories influential, necessarily, but rather that they confirm that I can lean into interiority as much as I want to. It’s not so much an influence as a comfort to know that Salinger existed and that people loved his work.

I know what you mean about having influences that aren’t necessarily analogues for your own writing but are still in your brain somehow.

Yeah—people who open doors. For instance, I read Henry Miller when I was a teen and I haven’t read him since, but he showed me that it was possible to just talk about nothing. There are little lights that are like, Yeah, writing is supposed to be this completely free thing. It’s guiding lights more than influences.

Totally. I noticed that anxiety, as a mode of relating to the world, is a through line that connects some of these stories. For example, in the title story, the protagonist is worried about the deaths that his son has witnessed and what effect they’re having on his psyche; in “The Presentation on Egypt,” a character hides her husband’s suicide from their daughter because she’s anxious about the effect that knowledge might have on her. Is that something you find yourself particularly interested in as a writer? And do you think there’s something about the short story form that makes it particularly suited to exploring anxiety and self-doubt?

It is very much a through line in the stories, in a way that it’s not in the novels. I don’t know why it made its way into the short stories only. I mean, it’s obviously a way I kind of relate to the world. I’m a huge worrier and my husband is not. It’s been 15 years and I worry about everything and he’s never worried about anything. I don’t understand how his brain works. I know that it’s not very healthy for me to worry about everything. And at the same time, it has gotten me where I am, so I feel like worry is part of what keeps my world going.

What I like the most about fiction is that it gives me access to other people’s ways of thinking. Sometimes I feel ashamed of the level of anxiety I have, and then I will talk to someone and they will reveal that we’re in the exact same boat. The goal of my stories is not to reach the maximum amount of people possible and do an after-school special about anxiety, but I think it’s very real to wake up in the morning already stressed. You can be very high-functioning, you can live your life, but you can still feel like everything is always ready to attack you in some way, that you need to keep your eye on everything. I think this creates some good energy in a story when people are constantly aware of their surroundings and are overinterpreting or misinterpreting what other people say.

I also wanted to ask about a particular move in a particular story. In “The Lottery in Almería,” the protagonist starts writing fiction: he begins writing the story we are reading (although he quickly diverges from what we’ve seen). And I noticed some other places in these stories where they playfully call attention to their own storyness. What do you think appeals to you about the metanarrative turn as a tool?

I remember writing that turn, and I was like, Why am I writing this? And there’s a similar moment in “Chicago on the Seine.” I was like, Why am I writing the ghost talking? Is this story becoming a ghost story? And in “The Lottery in Almería”—Is this story suddenly becoming a metafictional story? And then I kind of pulled away immediately. I thought, in both cases, that I would get rid of those moments. They entertained me in the moment—probably moments where I was like, Where is the story going? I’m frustrated, and then I write this thing that gives me a little jolt of pleasure, the pleasure I would feel as a reader if I encountered something like that. I don’t know, I find it fun. Often if something stays in the story, it’s because it was funny to me.

Speaking of that story, lotteries—characters winning one or not winning one—appear in multiple stories in the collection. Do you have a sense of what holds narrative interest for you about the lottery?

I think just it’s something I grew up with. I mean, I didn’t grow up playing the lottery, but I grew up with many uncles who played the lottery every week. They’re not idiots—they knew they had almost zero chance of winning. But every Friday they would play the lottery and then start talking about it as if they’d already won: “Yeah, with the million that I’m getting tomorrow, this is what I want.” And I found these conversations extremely entertaining as a five- and six-year-old—even still, because they still do it. They’re in their seventies and they’re doing it every week.

I like the idea that it’s something you’re sure is going to happen every time—real life necessarily diverges from expectation in that way.

My sister always says “when I win the lottery,” not “if,” but she doesn’t even play. She doesn’t even play, but she still says “when I win the lottery tomorrow.” I love it.

Something I particularly admire about your fiction, in both your stories and your novels, is the surprising moments of tenderness between characters, even when tenderness isn’t necessarily intended. In “Only Orange,” for example, the protagonist gives her brother’s girlfriend, whom she’s not fond of, a pair of glasses that purportedly help colorblind people see color; the girlfriend has just discovered she’s colorblind and the glasses are meant as a vengeful gesture, since the narrator is convinced the girlfriend is faking it and aims to expose her. But it is, of course, received as a kindness—the girlfriend is really delighted. And I feel like there are other moments like that throughout the stories: maybe someone doesn’t necessarily mean to be kind, or there’s passive-aggressiveness or insensitivity in their actions, but then there is also real sweetness. So I guess I’m wondering if you could talk about that a little bit. Do you feel like you’re interested in that porous line between kindness and cruelty?

It’s not something I think about deliberately. But I think if I’m good at anything, it’s reading the room and reading microexpressions or microreactions in people. Sometimes I’m surprised when I say something and someone is very touched by what I’m saying. To me, it was very natural, just a simple compliment, but I can see that they’re taking it very seriously. And conversely, I say something I don’t mean much by, but then they take it very badly or something. I’m really interested in misinterpretations or misaimed kindnesses or cruelties. When cruelty misses its point, and just is read as the nicest thing someone has ever said, it’s hilarious to me. I think I don’t want to write about people who communicate well.

It sounds like humor is something that guides you when you’re writing. Would you say that’s true?

When my first book came out in France, I was told it was very funny and I took it so badly. The book was about grief, but it’s true that it’s funny. When the book came out, I was 21 or 22, and to me, writing was serious, literature was serious. But all this stuff I liked was actually funny in some way. I’ve long been a huge fan of Philip Roth—he’s hilarious. But because my intention was not to be funny, I was hurt by the comment; after that, I tried to put the brakes on the funny so that I could be considered a serious writer. But then, lately, I’ve kind of let it go. I’m like, whatever. I love when something is funny amid the tragedy of life, so why erase that?

Perhaps relatedly, a few of the stories in the collection—as well as one of your novels, How to Behave in a Crowd—have children or adolescents as their protagonists, and I think you write them with such a lovely balance of humor and dignity. That strikes me as difficult to do, because the voice risks being either cloyingly childish or unrealistically precocious. Is that a difficulty that you feel when you’re writing? How do you find that balance?

I like that you said dignity because I never thought about it before, but it’s true that I have a huge reverence for children. I have five nieces and nephews now, who are between five and 18. When my first niece was born, I was really surprised that she had a personality already, and I think that actually made it into a story. Immediately, she didn’t like the light, didn’t like the sound of certain things. You could see it on her face: No, I don’t want any more of that.

I don’t like when children in literature are too cute or they’re denied agency. I mean, it’s true that they are under the care of their parents and they cannot make all the decisions for themselves, but they’re a lot more manipulative than we give them credit for. Not necessarily to do evil, but just in general—they are smarter than people give them credit for. I think it’s also a chance for me to look back on my own childhood and what it felt like. I was a very silent kid and I was fascinated with the people who spoke up and had the confidence to say what they thought. It’s kind of a replay of childhood, but I get to be all the characters and not just the one assigned to me, which was kind of boring. I could have been a cool kid, but now I get to imagine I’m them.

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Camille Bordas is a novelist and short story writer. She is the author of two novels in English, The Material (2024) and How to Behave in a Crowd (2017). Her earlier two, Partie Commune (2011) and Les Treize Desserts (2009), were written in her native French. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and The Paris Review. She has been named a Guggenheim Fellow. Born in France and raised in Mexico City and Paris, she currently lives in Chicago.