One Sun Only

Sharply observed portraits of contemporary life and family for readers who love Curtis Sittenfeld

Highly recommended, imaginative and wry

'With One Sun Only Bordas, whose short stories feature frequently in the New Yorker, has created a collection that captures the zeitgeist of today... I, for one, could listen to Bordas's characters talking and thinking all day. A truly effortless collection

Told with sparkling energy ... Joy, sorrow and worry bubble under the surface, and Bordas beautifully teases out these emotional truths

An unassuming and powerful collection that will leave you both captivated and entertained in equal measure

Bound to be something here to captivate you

One Sun Only is one of the best new collections I've read in a long time, not just for lines which pack in pathos and humour, conveyed through a character whom Bordas makes lively and real, but also for the pleasant experience of reading several such pieces back-to-back. How nice to move between their carefully crafted little worlds, and to be continually surprised

These scenarios, and the characters themselves, are both ordinary and fascinating ... Barthelme, Carver and Englander are masters of the short form, each in his own manner. All seek deeply to understand what it means to be human, however disturbing, unpleasant and ridiculous. The same goes for Camille Bordas

Bordas's deft, wry humour is evident ... One Sun Only is a book to cherish

It's not often that I find a collection in which every story is my favourite, but that is true here. Bordas' writing is generational - anxious, self-deprecating, witty, nihilistic - but what sets her apart is her incredible inclination for surprise. Each of these stories - like life - is its own singular, meandering, unguessable journey

Camille Bordas writes toward the quiet pressure points - the joke with a bruise under it, the love that won't behave, the losses that don't end when the funeral does. The prose is exact, unshowy, funny when it hurts to be, and tender without asking for mercy. These stories don't close so much as continue inside you. They tilt the world and don't set it back, leaving you to live with the shift

Bordas's narrators share a particular sensibility - smart, mordantly funny, and sharp-eyed about contemporary life on both sides of the Atlantic - but the stories themselves never land where you might expect. I hope this is the first of many collections, because I want to be reading Bordas for the rest of my life

Praise for Camille Bordas

Brilliance is on display

Funny, humane and slyly philosophical

Funny, intelligent and has much to say about how we live now

Camille Bordas is the author of The Material, How to Behave in a Crowd and two prize-winning French novels. Her short stories regularly appear in the New Yorker. Born in France, raised in Mexico City and Paris, she currently lives in Chicago.