Schweblin’s experiments in agency precipitate from an asymmetry of experience. Schweblin’s voyeuristic robots and continuously shifting perspective guides us through an extended meditation on personal agency that is both bleeding edge and timeless: when do we defend and when do we willfully forfeit our autonomy? How is it taken from us and how do we erase it from others? The glue that binds is the kentukis-but there is a thematic adhesive, too. Because of this, Little Eyes has the feel of an anthology or a linked collection. Other characters return and form larger arcs. Some, we meet only once-like a single mother in Vancouver who buys a kentuki at the insistence of her daughters, only to smash it to smithereens as soon as it wakes up and immediately attacks them. We meet a dizzying array of characters, keepers and dwellers both. The chapters of Little Eyes bounce between houses and apartments around the world-from Lima to Erfurt to Hong Kong and back again. And a kentuki can’t make a sound beyond an animal squeak, so it can be difficult for a keeper to get a sense of who, exactly, is wandering around their home. The catch is that the connection between dweller and keeper is random and permanent-there is no way of knowing who in the world you’ll be connected to. Kentukis are sold in two parts to two people: a “keeper,” who buys the kentuki itself, and a “dweller,” who watches through little cameras in the eyes of the kentuki, and controls its movements from a tablet, like a drone. But kentukis are complicated-they can move, for one, and they house a human mind rather than a computer chip.
The fevered desire for these toys won’t need any explanation for ’90s kids who still remember the brief, universal lust for a Furby around the millennium.
The cursed new technology comes in the form of cute, animatronic toys called “kentukis” (the word is uncapitalized throughout the book in an interesting and unexplained disavowal of brand) that go from mysterious knick-knacks on a hardware store shelf to global phenomenon over the course of the book. Samanta Schweblin’s newest novel, Little Eyes, translated from the Spanish by the excellent Megan McDowell and recently longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is a bit like a long Black Mirror episode.
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