Book Review Samanta Schweblin Little Eyes

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2020 by Riverhead Books An Argentinian Spanish Language novel translated by Megan McDowell Is it science fiction if the tech to make it happen already exists? This is quite a creepy novel. I remember the Tamagotchi fad of the 1980’s. It seemed everyone had one of these electronic pets that cried for food and craved attention, and died if the owner neglected them. The Kentuckis are a bigger and more invasive & sinister variation of that. The Kentucki’s come as cute owls, moles, dragons, pandas, etc. They follow their owners around home, shops and work and also film every move the owner makes. The footage is relayed to someone who the actual devise owner is not supposed to know or see. This creates inevitable problems, invasion of privacy, voyeurism, crime, etc. This is a Tamagotchi for the Big Brother generation, a roving CCTV camera enabling someone who could be anywhere in the World to watch and log everything the Kentucki owners do. Who therefore is the real owner of the pet? Does the operator own the person observed too? The rules get complicated. The Kentuckis don’t speak, but owners sometimes find ingenious ways to communicate with the unseen watchers, Oiji Board cards, morse codes, complex hand signals, etc. The controllers are not told who owns the Kentucki they will get to activate, which leads to some conflict. One operator immediately starts blackmailing three young ladies who have displayed their naked bodies to their mechanized pet. Another operator finds that he is expected to watch and entertain dementia sufferers in a nursing home and immediately shuts down his Kentucki in revulsion. It is lack of control of just who the operator and observed would be that makes it unlikely the devises would catch on. At least I hope so, as unlike most science fiction, the technology for creating the Kentucki is very much with us now, and it would only take a strong marketing campaign to turn this nightmare into a reality. There is some humour. One owner calls her Kentucki Colonel Sanders and this reflects the book's sense of global franchise. Chapters read like short stories set in different cities around the World though some Kentucki relationships are revisited as the book goes along. There is resistance and hackers struggle to crack the codes that shut down a Kentucki if it loses battery control or if its controller decides to disarm it. There are even hints that some Kentucki may be developing AI sentience but this is not pursued too much. A strong, often damning look at how easily we let ourselves be watched, sold useless gadgetry, and expose our secrets to strangers in a technological World. The cover art shows a set of Kentucki pandas, waiting to be purchased. This is keeping with several scenes of the devises dominating department store shelves and the extent of this dangerous craze, hopefully never to be or as short lived a fad as the Tamagotchi craze. Read as part of the currently virtual Worldwise Learning Centre international literature book club sessions at the University Of Central Lancashire (UCLAN). Arthur Chappell