Likes

Book excerpt: Nine stories that capture “the tensions that exist between technology, parenthood and growing up. . . . An innovative portrait of modern living” (Time). A Best Book of the Year: Library Journal Electric Literature The New York Public Library, PopMatters A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Story Prize Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize From the National Book Award finalist behind Madeline is Sleeping and Ms. Hempel Chronicles, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s Likes marks the return of a master of contemporary fiction. Through unexpected visitors, school fairs, aging indie-film stars, capitalist shell games, and the Instagram posts of a twelve-year-old girl, these stories of friendship and parenthood, celebrity and obsession, race and class, and the passage of time form an engrossing collection that is both otherworldly and suffused with the charged hum of everyday life. Mythic and modern, Likes uses quick, masterful, nearly invisible cuts to helps us see into our unacknowledged desires and, in quick, artful, nearly invisible cuts, exposes the roots of our abiding terrors and delights. A perfect choice for readers of Joy Williams, George Saunders, Lauren Groff, and Deborah Eisenberg. “The sentences . . . bring to life characters who possess rich inner lives even when navigating moments that feel dreamily sinister or otherworldly.” —Caitlin Horrocks, The New York Times Book Review “Acollection of stories that find politics gone crazy, girls and women navigating their ways through social media minefields, and identity refracted through celebrity culture. . . . As clean prose dissects messy lives, these stories combine an empathetic heart with acute understanding.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)