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Little Eyes

A Novel

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Her most unsettling work yet — and her most realistic." —New York Times

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York TimesO, The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Vulture, Bustle, Refinery29, and Thrillist
A visionary novel about our interconnected present, about the collision of horror and humanity, from a master of the spine-tingling tale.

They've infiltrated homes in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of in Sierra Leone, town squares in Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Indiana. They're everywhere. They're here. They're us. They're not pets, or ghosts, or robots. They're real people, but how can a person living in Berlin walk freely through the living room of someone in Sydney? How can someone in Bangkok have breakfast with your children in Buenos Aires, without your knowing? Especially when these people are completely anonymous, unknown, unfindable.
The characters in Samanta Schweblin's brilliant new novel, Little Eyes, reveal the beauty of connection between far-flung souls—but yet they also expose the ugly side of our increasingly linked world. Trusting strangers can lead to unexpected love, playful encounters, and marvelous adventure, but what happens when it can also pave the way for unimaginable terror? This is a story that is already happening; it's familiar and unsettling because it's our present and we're living it, we just don't know it yet. In this prophecy of a story, Schweblin creates a dark and complex world that's somehow so sensible, so recognizable, that once it's entered, no one can ever leave.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 23, 2020
      Schweblin (Fever Dream) unfurls an eerie, uncanny story of Furby-like robots that roll around and make animal sounds, connecting people throughout the world in unsettling ways. The dolls, called kentuki, are equipped with cameras and separate controllers, and their ownership is split between “keepers” and “dwellers.” The keeper purchases a doll, while the dweller buys its controller and watches through the kentuki’s camera via the internet. Schweblin catapults through a dizzying array of vignettes. Marvin, a boy in Antigua, secretly buys a kentuki “dweller” controller using his mother’s savings. In South Bend, Ind., Robin and two of her friends conduct cam shows with their kentuki before the dweller begins spelling out increasingly alarming and sexual demands on the girls’ Ouija board. Emilia, a lonely woman in Lima, quickly takes on the dweller role with Eva, a woman in Germany, who buys dog toys and other pet distractions for Emilia to play with via the kentuki. Daring, bold, and devious, the idea fascinates despite the underdeveloped narrative, and the disparate vignettes fail to build toward a satisfying conclusion. Schweblin’s take on the erosion of privacy and new forms of digital connection yields an ingenious concept, but the sum is less than its parts.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Cassandra Campbell portrays a cast of characters from around the world in a work of speculative fiction that addresses the ubiquity of technology. Virtual pets, called "kentukis," allow a stranger from somewhere else in the world to control everything the pet sees, while the owner can choose how much or how little to share. Campbell's narration is immersive. The listener feels transported from Spain to Sweden and to Brazil as she seamlessly slips between the third-person narrative and the dialogue, using accents and inflection to reflect locale and, more importantly, the age of the characters. This story encourages listeners to grapple with how they themselves use technology. A.R.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

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