Little Eyes

DNF'd at 62%. Schweblin is a good writer, but this the combination of theme and structure didn't work for me. The story concerns the latest electronic toy, called a Kentuki, a sort of terrible cross between a Furby and Chat Roulette. The narrative is fractured into little vignettes, following different people who are affected by the presence of the Kentukis. Intellectually, it's an interesting commentary on things today, but the effect felt like a whole season of Black Mirror devoted to the same doohickey.

My second Samanta Schweblin. I thought [b:Fever Dream 30763882 Fever Dream Samanta Schweblin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1471279721l/30763882.SX50.jpg 42701168] was marvellous, and then I skipped her short story collection, because I have a hard time engaging with short stories. Little Eyes is almost like a collection of interlaced short stories, but they are tied together in their focus matter: Kentuckis are remote avatars in cute toy format. They are the new craze on the market. Keepers host their kentuckis like pets, dwellers remote control those kentuckis with the help of a video camera and toy-car style motor control. Dweller and keeper are randomly assigned. Communication is limited and needs to be negotiated. What follows is a range of stories that show how (and why) we find companionship even if the companion is a small purring bunny toy, or a person in another country you watch on a computer screen for three hours a day. People are driven by loneliness, escapism, boredom, a wish for adventures...Why were the stories about kentuckies so small, so minutely intimate, stingy, and predictable? So desperately human and quotidian.While some enjoy the one-way anonymity this relationship offers, others exploit that. And because Schweblin is a horror story teller, here's where the creepy aspect of keeper-dweller dynamics creeps in. What started as an innocent attempt at forming a connection, slowly turns into something unhealthy. Schweblin masterfully moves some of the stories from quiet to disquieting territories. I quite enjoyed these stories as an interesting study of humanity's presence/future with technology. It tackles our behaviour with pieces of technology that have agency (artificial or human), and also every technology's potential for exploitation. In additional it questions if all relationship that rely on an unequal power dynamic are ultimately doomed? Is the one-way flow of information what causes the thrill of exhibitionism and voyeurism that makes us invade the lifes of strangers? The human-inhabited kentuckis stand in interesting contrast to our fears of anthropomorphism of A.I. controlled robots.

This was AWESOME, and my second 5 star read from Schweblin. It reads like an episode of Black Mirror. As someone who lived through the Furby phase, the idea of little furry robot toys running around all day was not a strange one. What got weird, and quickly, was how the furry robots are really “watchers”- a stranger on the other end viewing everything.