Good collection of short stories. A few of them went over my head, but I enjoyed it. I’d recommend as an easy beach read.

A really liked most of these stories, 2of the 9 dragged for me. The other I wished to read more. I recommend for all readers.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

Now that the cat is out of the bag all of the judges loved this book. There’s no question as to why this book was a finalist for the fiction prize. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s sentences—are so wonderful and precise I’m not sure I can pick a favorite story out of the bunch. Here’s just the first one my finger lands on when I plop open the book.
“She has arching eyebrows and the smallest possible pores, flat red lipstick. . . . She must be at least forty-five years old! You’d never know it, because her skin is amazing.”

I love a good selection of short stories. Short stories are very underrated, but can be so enjoyable when done well. this collection is no exception. It is very easy to see why this book did so well commercially. The stories draw you in and make you wish there was a whole novel about each story. Well done.

Loved all the stories! She is a new writer for me and I'm going to circle back and read whatever else she has written! Pure, delicious entertainment!

I received an ARC from NG in trade for an honest review.

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Great plot! I love the pacing. It is very well written

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

I was very excited for this and appreciate the publisher allowing me early access in exchange for an honest review.

The opening story was weird but without any sort of quirky aha moment. It didn’t cause that reflective pause to sit in one’s thoughts and think about what they just read. Instead, you were onto the next story without giving the previous characters or story a second thought. Several of the stories felt like just collection of lines but not an actual “story.”

However, there were also gems in the collection that transported readers to another time and place. The prose was beautiful and you felt connected to the characters. Overall, it was a nice collection and a quick read.

Lovely, melancholy and haunting stories about women in relation to themselves and others. I took a break after each story to savor its message, and several times I wished for the story to be novel length. The characters were interesting and fully fleshed, sometimes imperfect, and sometimes unreliable narrators of their own lives. There's so much to savor here.

These are lovely, well plotted and well told human-scale stories, all of them with little kernels of hard truths at their centers to be discovered. Pacing varies, but not a true dud in the bunch.

Special thanks to FSG for the egalley for review.

The collection opens with the story, “The Erkling” which follows a mother and daughter as they wander around the local fairy fair. Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s writing seamlessly weaves between the realities and expectations of this pair, along with their hopes for and disappointments in each other. The casual slippage between characters is a pleasure to read and gave the story an ephemeral air that I found so compelling. After this first story, I knew I was in for a treat.

When going back over the stories in the contents in order to write my review, there was only one that was ‘meh’ for me—“Tell Me My Name”—but I think something was happening there that I just wasn’t quite understanding. Every other story in the collection made me audibly gasp and whisper “wow” at some point. Bynum’s prose is quick, succinct, and so so beautiful, but also deeply familiar. Many of her stories focus on girlhood, coming of age, and refuting that process. I found myself reflected in little corners of her stories through mirrors I didn’t know I needed, the catharsis and recognition there so inviting. “The Young Wife’s Tale” and “Many A Little Makes” in particular were both deeply affecting for me in ways that I’m having a hard time articulating. Essentially, it feels like Bynum tore off a corner of my soul and sculpted a story out of it. Below, I've included a mini-review for each of the individual stories, but suffice to say, I loved the collection and am adding all of Bynum's backlist titles to my TBR.

THE ERKLING
As mentioned above, this story was an absolute delight. Weaving the realities and expectations of mother and daughter, this story explores our hopes and disappointments in one another.

TELL ME MY NAME
Revolving around an obsession with their neighbor celebrity, this is the only story of the collection that was a bit lackluster for me.

THE YOUNG WIFE'S TALE
Part fairytale allegory, part real-world exploration of a strained relationship, this story is absolute perfection. Bynum infuses such ephemeral exchanges with such raw emotion that at the end, I felt like I needed to come up for air. That last sentence—just wow.

THE BEARS
This one took me a little while to get into, but once I got my bearings (da dum ch) I found the story to be wise and melancholy.

MANY A LITTLE MAKES
This one is an incredible exploration of female friendships and is both nostalgic and disturbing. There is essentially a rape scene with cake, but Bynum sticks the landing and ends on a beautiful note.

THE BURGLAR
Yet another story with seamless changes in POV, this story really feels like Bynum is showing off (and I'm totally here for it). So many small moments in this story were entirely relatable in a not so flattering way.

JULIA AND SUNNY
I might be moved to say I found this the most important story in the entire collection, focussing on our narcissistic tendency to make other people's traumas about us. Much of the writing seems to hinge on a single sentence, that once read allows everything to fall into place, revealing a shocking and wise vignette that's still subtle and beautiful.

LIKES (titular story)
I always tend to pay special attention to the titular story of a collection, and while I found this one enjoyable, it definitely wasn't my favorite. It reminded me of the A24 movie Eighth Grade, but from the dad's perspective. An exploration of the unknowable world of teenage girls and all of the ways we fail them.

BEDTIME STORY
Ending on a slightly disturbing note, this one left me feeling off-balance as the character comes to terms with her husband editorializing their shared memories as he recounts them to their son. She mentions having the "pleasure of being seen" even when her husband clearly doesn't see her, and living in that cognitive dissonance was a hell of a way to end the collection.

Love a debut short story collection because it is the unique opportunity for an author to stretch out and show off their skills and the best collections are the ones that bring those skills together in the final story. Shun-Lien Bynum demonstrates a wonderful mastery of genre as she deals out the 9 short stories in her book but they cease to come together in skill or theme toward the end. Regardless, this reader is better for having spent the time with this author because I will pick her full length work when it’s announced. She reminds me of a cross between Lauren Groff and Helen Oyeyemi in that she has the capacity to be magical but her conflicts are grounded in every day, ever present real issues. Covered in this work are: friendship, parenting, race, class, celebrity, obsession and how the passage of time is perceived within different stations in life. The work is honest and yet it lifts the reader away into that immersive place wherein one can expand, transcend, land and tread differently as they intersect, nurture and respect the rising generations oh so different that ones of yesteryear.

Here is the review I posted on Goodreads:
If you enjoy short stories (admittedly they are not for everyone; if you do not like them as a genre, perhaps consider not reviewing them on Goodreads?) this collection will offer great satisfaction. My favorite story is "The Erlking," which is about a mother who romanticizes a particular childhood aesthetic (think wooden toys, Waldorf, wings) while also feeling it excludes herself and her daughter because they are not rich or white. Yet in the process of idealizing the Waldorf aesthetic (and honestly, what mother raising a child in the digital age has not?), she misses something very important right in front of her: namely, her daughter, who does not want to wear wings or be named Ondine and who is in danger of being lured away by a strange man at the Elves Fair. This man could be fantastical (Wikipedia tells me that “Erlking” is the German Romantic name for “king of the fairies”) but he also has a very real world counterpart, and Bynum does an incredible job forging a connection between the two, implying children are not any safer in a world of whitewashed fairy tales and wooden toys. This story combines two of Bynum’s strengths: gracefully blending realism with fairytales and poking fun at our modern American approach to education (for more of the latter, also check out her wonderful Ms Hempel Chronicles).

Other standouts in the collection include the gorgeous novella “Many A Little Makes,” which treats the friendships of adolescent girls with seriousness and sensitivity while reflecting on past interactions through the lens of modern feminism and the MeToo movement, “Julia and Sunny” where a couple reveals their own biases and blindspots through their insights (or lack thereof) into their friends’ divorce, “Likes” where a father tries to understand his daughter through her Instagram account around the time of the 2016 election (the connection this story makes between teen influencer speak and 45’s bombastic hyperbole is simply brilliant), and “Bedtime Story” where a father’s bedtime anecdote sets off a wife’s interior journey through the darkest moments of their relationship (the way time moves here and in “Many A Little Makes” reminds me a lot of Alice Munro). So many standouts in this collection, all funny, human, and wise.

A meandering of stories that have a little bit of everything. Compulsive reading. I found myself turning to the next story wondering what I would discover and I was never disappointed. Check it out. Awesome book. Happy reading!

3.5 stars

I found parts of this book deeply intriguing, but found others parts not quite what I was expecting. I remember loving the author's book "Madeleine is Sleeping" from some years back, and her writing remains beautiful. I found the characters compelling, but parts of this felt ever so slightly too short for my usual taste.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the chance to read this book!

A wonderful read.Each story kept me interested enjoying the characters the storyline .A book I will be recommending,#netgalley#likes

These stories were incredibly rich. There wasn’t a single one that I put down in the middle of, and I found myself completely enthralled in the characters. While I found the writing to be beautiful, I struggled to come away with meaning from many of the stories, and felt confused by some of the endings. This is probably due to me treating these stories like parables, and looking to glean a lesson or ultimate truth from them. I had been referring to the stories as “dark fables,” because a few of them felt like cautionary tales in a woodland setting.

These stories were darker than I expected, which I delighted in, and I think will fare very well for the fall release, and those who may be seeking a spooky or escapist feel. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is not only an impressive writer, but a creator of imaginary worlds that feel stunningly real.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for an early ebook. It’s been a while since there’s been a new book from this author and I was so happy to slip back into the world’s that she can create with this group of nine stories. She is delightful throughout, with the perfect turn of phase or wry observation that just hit in such an off kilter way. And the best stories, Julia and Sunny, where a married couple watches another couple’s marriage end, Many a Little Makes, about three teenage girls and how they found each other and tried to figure out life, school, parents and boys, and Likes, about a father who tries to understand his twelve year old daughter by trying to understand the pictures on her instagram, these stories seem like the most memorable you’re likely to come across.

Thank you to the author and publisher for providing me with a digital ARC of this title via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars I am not usually a fan of short stories, but thought I would give this one a try based on all the good reviews for this title and for this author. Sarah Shunlien Bynum is obviously a talented writer. It was very easy to get in to each story. The problem was that I was too much into each story that when it quickly ended, I was disappointed. I found so many of her short stories to be so interesting and creative that I wanted to find out what happened next! Overall, it was a good read with many good short stories from a talented, creative writer. I would happily try out another by her, but still am not sold on short stories. The way they are all put together did make for a nice compilation and did tell a story in its own way. While I was disappointed to keep leaving each little story, overall there was a beauty and interest created by the way these short stories were woven together into one novel.

I’ve never read anything by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum before Likes, her first short-story collection after two novels. Brandon Taylor on twitter commented how much he loved the writing, and that praise and the gorgeous cover was more than enough for me to send the NetGalley request. After how much I enjoyed Taylor’s debut novel Real Life I figured his recommendation couldn’t steer me too wrong, and I was right. Likes is absolutely excellent; every single story is a hit.

The collection opens with a story called “The Erlking,” a story about a mother named Kate who takes her daughter Ruthie to a local fairy day, put on by the local Waldorf. All at once, Bynum manages to evoke both Kate’s anxieties and hopes about motherhood and giving her daughter all of the advantages she can, and Ruthie, who loses herself in her own imagined reality where an old man she sees is a magical wizard who is going to choose her because she is special and good. This story would have been compelling from just one point of view— Katie in the adult reality, Ruthie in hers— but the way Bynum layers their realities and anxieties over one another even when they’re not communicating is masterfully done.

Bynum’s writing is snappy, economical without any wasted words but also unhurried, where she spends a page or a paragraph describing the wildflowers a character sees on the side of the road in a way that makes you, the reader, understand that, yes, this should be here. This is the story, even when “nothing” is happening.

Often, the stories in Likes focus on girlhood, parenthood, or a combination of the two. The story “Many A Little Makes,” is maybe my favorite of the collection. A woman named Mari is reflecting back on her two best friends from middle school, and Bynum so perfectly captured the overwhelming feelings of longing and fear and joy of that particular stage of tween adolescence without getting lost in sentimentality or cliche that it made my heart ache. Children, even when secondary characters, are equally well-drawn as the adults, neither overly precious nor cartoons. The title story was published in The New Yorker a few years back, and it is a really vivid and moving story about a dad trying to connect with his reticent twelve-year-old daughter, partly by examining her Instagram posts, and which also takes place during and captures the gut-punch of the 2016 election. I was reminded of Emma Cline's Daddy, which used a similar technique of misdirection, framing a story from a male main character but pointing us all along to the woman or girl. Even though “Likes” isn’t told by Ivy herself, we still see her struggles and character written with frankness and compassion.

Bynum’s writing is the kind of writing that inspires me to write. By that, I mean partly that I wish I had written these stories because of how good they are, but also that I was so moved by her obvious skill that I was inspired to sit back down at a word document and try harder.

Thank you to FSG and NetGalley for this e-book in exchange for a review. I will be reading Bynum’s other work as soon as I can, and I highly recommend pre-ordering Likes from your local bookstore today.