OCTOBER 2020 - AudioFile
Narrator Jean Ann Douglass captures ups and downs and contradictions of contemporary life in these short stories by Bynum. Douglass excels in conveying the self-deprecating, guilt-ridden interior monologues of the suburban moms who are the main characters in many of these narratives. Douglass's tone and pitch are easy on the ears, so the stories whiz by in segments of around 30 minutes. Listeners will laugh out loud at Douglass’s ability to capture characters' reactions to mundane phenomena like the price of souvenirs at a school fair and the agony of decision making behind tween Instagram posts. As a whole, the stories feel light and airy, yet the insights they offer on contemporary life linger after the volume has ended. M.R. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Caitlin Horrocks
The adjectives that readers often attach to Bynum's work—"enchanting," "charming," "precise"—are accurate, but can give the impression that she specializes in dollhouse miniatures, masterfully crafted but bloodless. Her skills and her sensibility are deeper and darker than that. The sentences are indeed meticulous, but never for their own sake; they bring to life characters who possess rich inner lives even when navigating moments that feel dreamily sinister or otherworldly. To borrow Marianne Moore's description of poems as "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," Bynum offers her reader inventively landscaped, beautifully manicured gardens teeming with rewardingly warty toads.
Publishers Weekly
★ 07/06/2020
Bynum’s sparkling, transcendent latest (after Ms. Hempel Chronicles) follows the big decisions and minutiae that make up the messy lives of her characters. Each story is delicate and dazzling in its own way—this is the rare collection where each entry is as good as the one that came before it. The title story follows a father’s desperate attempts to understand his young daughter through the lens of her pink-hued Instagram feed. In “The Bears,” a writer attends a rural residency while recovering from the trauma of a miscarriage; there, she doesn’t write, and on her long walks becomes obsessed with a gorgeous nearby house and its mysterious occupant. “Julia and Sunny” chronicles the dissolution of a once-solid marriage from the biased perspective of the couple’s closest friends, another married couple. And in the sublime “Many a Little Makes,” three school friends explore their differences in race, body type, and varying degrees of sexual experimentation. The stories hum with thrilling detail and are touched here and there by small hints of magic, such as a young girl imagining a stranger at a party will give her a gift (“A surprise that is small and very delicate, like a music box, but when you open it, it goes down and down, like a rabbit hole, and inside there is everything”). With the exuberance of the best Elizabeth McCracken stories and the insights of Tessa Hadley, these tales are at once gorgeously rendered and empathetic. This has the feel of an instant classic. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Library Journal, Electric Literature, The New York Public Library, PopMatters
A Finalist for the Story Prize
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
A Best Book of Fall at Refinery29, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Magazine, Alma Magazine
A WIRED Ultimate Summer Reading pick
Most Anticipated at Time, WIRED, Lit Hub, PureWow, and The Millions, and Publishers Lunch
"Finely attuned to both sensory and emotional detail . . . The adjectives that readers often attach to Bynum’s work—'enchanting,' 'charming,' 'precise'—are accurate, but . . . her skills and her sensibility are deeper and darker than that. The sentences are indeed meticulous, but never for their own sake; they bring to life characters who possess rich inner lives even when navigating moments that feel dreamily sinister or otherworldly . . . Bynum offers her reader inventively landscaped, beautifully manicured gardens teeming with rewardingly warty toads.”
—Caitlin Horrocks, The New York Times Book Review
"Likes brilliantly captures our current moment . . . Certain authors have such mastery over the short story form that you never forget the first time you read their work. Lorrie Moore, for example. Jim Shepard. Deborah Eisenberg. Add to that impressive list Sarah Shun-lien Bynum with her new collection, Likes as evidence . . . Likes is a short-story collection you should read slowly, but it’s so good, each story at such a high-wire level, that you’ll wind up tearing through it and wishing for more."
—Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
"Captures the tensions that exist between technology, parenthood and growing up . . . The nine pieces, though rooted in reality, contain unexpected undercurrents of magic, coalescing into an innovative portrait of modern living."
—Time
"Sparkling, transcendent . . . Each story is delicate and dazzling in its own way . . . The stories hum with thrilling detail and are touched here and there by small hints of magic . . . With the exuberance of the best Elizabeth McCracken stories and the insight of Tessa Hadley, these tales are at once gorgeously rendered and empathetic. This has the feel of an instant classic."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Throughout, Bynum combines a firm command of tone (often warm, even when dark) with precise detail . . . As clean prose dissects messy lives, these stories combine an empathetic heart with acute understanding."
—Kirkus, starred review
"Despite her frequent use of the language of myths and fairytales, Bynum’s focus is deceptively ordinary. Time and again, her characters reckon with how—and if—you can ever really close the gap between yourself and someone else . . . Likes is a comforting reminder that relationships are often contradictory."
—Eve Sneider, WIRED
"Known for her keen observation of human nature as well as her wit and humor, these tales investigate the conundrums of modern American living."
—Jennifer Day, Chicago Tribune
“Sarah Shun-lien Bynum not only makes us see and feel what we may have missed in our busy lives, but articulates what we see and feel with the precise words we’ve always been searching for but rarely find. How does she capture the world in its shimmery and inexplicable state so deftly? Stories in this collection lead the readers to feel nostalgic for experiences both lived and missed, alarmed and yet thrilled by the mysteries hidden in everyday moments, and above all, hopeful and grateful that there is no need to compromise: we can live as fully and expansively as these stories.”
—Yiyun Li, author of Where Reasons End
"Each of the stories in Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's dazzling new collection offers lucid insight into the many perversities, small and large, that define our most typical interactions. From a father confused by his adolescent daughter's social media persona to a writer dealing with the lingering effects of a miscarriage, Bynum's stories probe the fragile, confusing moments of our lives, and tease out the underlying thrums of energy, magnifying all the emotion that exists just below the surface, illuminating what it means to be alive right now."
—Kristin Iversen, Refinery29
"Nine of the author’s greatest short stories. In settings that range from a Waldorf school fair to the Instagram page of a twelve-year-old, the characters in these stories move through adolescence, childhood, and parenthood, all while dealing with the miseries of life under late capitalism."
—Thomas Beckwith, The Millions
“Oh, what a treasure trove of delights this is! The most succulent details are tucked inside the warmth of these characters’ voices, and it is Bynum’s governing and generous intelligence that gives shape to their stories, always holding close and with care our complex yearnings and desires.”
—Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s mastery of the short story form is on immediate display in her new collection, Likes. [She] is exceptionally skilled at subtle shifts and seemingly casual details . . . Bynum can wring suspense from the slightest interactions."
—Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"In this collection of nine stories, ideal for fans of Tessa Hadley and Lauren Groff, Bynum explores the contradictions of modern life in stories about friendship, parenthood, celebrity and more."
—Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow
“These stories caught me in the throat. Everything I thought to be true—about home invaders and husbands, BFFs and rich hippie schools—is revealed to be temporary, spectral, fragile as glass. Likes is a cunning, electrifying work by one of the best writers of our times.”
—Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia and New People
"A wonderful short story collection . . . In each story, there’s an element of the otherworldly and magical — there’s one story about an ancient king — but each stays firmly rooted in astute observations of our reality: of how a teenage girl acts on social media; of how a Black writer on a crime show has to navigate his identity and his desire for a promotion; of a mom wanting her child to have a good education, and more. Every time I got to the end of the story, I wished it would keep going."
—Emily Burack, Alma
"Amusingly examines the contradictions and complexities of our modern moment with cutting portrayals of Waldorf school fairs, tween Instagrammers, and aging indie-film starlets."
—Malia Mendez and Hailey Eber, Los Angeles Magazine
"For fans of Aimee Bender, Karen Russell, Joy Williams, and all that is good."
—Emily Temple, Lit Hub
Library Journal
10/30/2020
The stories in Bynum's new collection are linked not by recurring characters or settings but by a certain sensibility. Each is an acutely realistic and nuanced depiction of a relationship—whether between friends, spouses, parent and child—often with an additional element of fairy tale or fantasy that keeps the reader slightly off-kilter. In "The Erlking," the opening story, a mother and daughter experience an Elves Faire at a Waldorf School in their own parallel realities, the mother in an echo chamber of her own parental insecurities and anxieties, the daughter glimpsing the vaguely menacing magic behind the cutesy facade. In "The Burglar," aspects of a woman's encounter with a petty thief mirror a script that her husband is writing for a supernatural TV crime show. In "The Bears," a woman convalescing at a writer's retreat after a miscarriage has a Goldilocks-like experience in a beautiful house with which she becomes obsessed on her solitary walks. The longest story, "Many a Little Makes," is an exceedingly tender and raw depiction of an adolescent friendship among three girls, viewed from a distance. VERDICT A striking and memorable collection of surprising stories and shifting identities. —Lauren Gilbert, Center for Jewish History, New York NY
OCTOBER 2020 - AudioFile
Narrator Jean Ann Douglass captures ups and downs and contradictions of contemporary life in these short stories by Bynum. Douglass excels in conveying the self-deprecating, guilt-ridden interior monologues of the suburban moms who are the main characters in many of these narratives. Douglass's tone and pitch are easy on the ears, so the stories whiz by in segments of around 30 minutes. Listeners will laugh out loud at Douglass’s ability to capture characters' reactions to mundane phenomena like the price of souvenirs at a school fair and the agony of decision making behind tween Instagram posts. As a whole, the stories feel light and airy, yet the insights they offer on contemporary life linger after the volume has ended. M.R. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2020-06-17
A collection of stories that find politics gone crazy, girls and women navigating their ways through social media minefields, and identity refracted through celebrity culture.
The title story generated considerable attention when it appeared in the New Yorker in 2017. On one level it's about a father’s attempts to decipher the life of his 12-year-old daughter through her Instagram posts, some of which appear to be suggestive, or maybe that’s just to him. Here's one: “New post: a pair of lips, shining wetly.” Another: “New Instagram post: a peeled-off pair of ballet tights, splayed on the white tiles of a bathroom floor.” Just what is it she’s trying to communicate, and with whom? When he tries to talk with his daughter, she's often silent or, perhaps worse, complains that she has no friends. Beyond the father-daughter relationship, the story, set against a backdrop of a dysfunctional culture whose presidential election defies understanding, captures a more general malaise. So many of the stories here are about trying to understand, failing to connect, and interpreting the signs from a relentless barrage of media. The stories evoke myth (“The Erlking”), fairy tales (“Young Wife’s Tale”), and science fiction (“The Burglar”), with dreamlike reveries that find protagonists not quite clear on what they're experiencing, let alone what it means. Throughout, Bynum combines a firm command of tone (often warm, even when dark) with precise detail. In "Many a Little Makes," the longest story and the collection’s centerpiece, a woman named Mari gets a long text from an old friend and finds it reviving all sorts of memories of girls on the cusp of adolescence, how a few years found them changing so dramatically in different ways, how boys and parents complicated the relationship. Bynum's characters struggle to determine who they are, how they are, and how they were, in a distant time before smartphones and cyber-media.
As clean prose dissects messy lives, these stories combine an empathetic heart with acute understanding.
