Review by Booklist Review
Bynum's (Ms. Hempel Chronicles, 2008) prowess here lies in her ingenious ability to elevate seemingly minor moments into the pivotal crux of a narrative. Take, for example, in "Julia and Sunny," perhaps the most affecting of Bynum's nine stories, "a small square of silky, pale blue material" that is mistakenly left behind by one child, found by another, then neglected by the adults who should have been more responsible. Into that single blue square, Bynum deftly, remarkably, weaves the dissolution of a marriage, a family, and an intensely long friendship between two couples. In other standouts, an unexpected message addressed to a long-unused nickname reveals the complicated history of three childhood friends in "Many a Little Makes"; in the titular "Likes," a father considers that his tween daughter's Instagram account is more revealing than his actual child; in "The Burglar," a scheduled pest extermination appointment becomes the converging point for an intruder, his victims, and a fictional criminal a screenwriter is loath to create. Although the collection proves uneven, Bynum's more dazzling tales surpass the less memorable for ultimately rewarding results
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
A New Yorker 20 Under 40 author and a National Book Award finalist for Madeleine Is Sleeping, Bynum captures the contemporary moment in her distinctively lyrical, off-kilter language, with nine stories featuring surprised hosts, fading indie-film stars, desperate workers, and an Instagram-crazed 12-year-old, all steering through life's everyday battles. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
