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A review by erinlcrane
Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin
4.0
Overall, a weird good time. I love a SF/speculative book that adds one SF feature to the world and just explores human nature through that. You can endlessly entertain me with that.
In this case we've got kentukis, which I have to say I was picturing as Furbies, populating the world. They exist in this story in a way that I do not think would be possible in the real world. Or it would at least not be as popular as it is in this story. Too invasive, too little control. But you go along with it in the book for the sake of the story.
I love that we explored both kentuki owners and kentuki handlers. We looked at the many reasons why someone might want to own or handle a kentuki and the many ways kentukis could go right or wrong in people's lives. There are themes of loneliness, voyeurism, freedom, private vs public selves, and more. Each POV had a satisfying, if mostly dark, ending.
My main complaint is the structure of this book. I wanted to hear each story in one go. It didn't make sense to me to break them up into different POVs to be parceled out over the whole book. None of the people in these stories connect with the others, so it felt very artificial to break them up. It felt like it was done just to make it more like a novel than a collection of short stories. I would have liked it better as a collection of short stories that were just connected by this idea of the kentukis.
In this case we've got kentukis, which I have to say I was picturing as Furbies, populating the world. They exist in this story in a way that I do not think would be possible in the real world. Or it would at least not be as popular as it is in this story. Too invasive, too little control. But you go along with it in the book for the sake of the story.
I love that we explored both kentuki owners and kentuki handlers. We looked at the many reasons why someone might want to own or handle a kentuki and the many ways kentukis could go right or wrong in people's lives. There are themes of loneliness, voyeurism, freedom, private vs public selves, and more. Each POV had a satisfying, if mostly dark, ending.
My main complaint is the structure of this book. I wanted to hear each story in one go. It didn't make sense to me to break them up into different POVs to be parceled out over the whole book. None of the people in these stories connect with the others, so it felt very artificial to break them up. It felt like it was done just to make it more like a novel than a collection of short stories. I would have liked it better as a collection of short stories that were just connected by this idea of the kentukis.