Schweblin's ability to unnerve is on display from the very first of Little Eyes' short chapters, as a teen girl works out how to communicate with her 'kentuki' only for things to go horribly wrong now that the robotically controlled stuffed toy's user ('dweller'), anonymous behind the internet somewhere in the world, can reach more directly into the 'keeper' 's life.
The book never returns to that first vignette; it's structured with a combination of similar stand-alones and chapters forming parts of longer narratives, all showing different ways in which the kentuki technology is either used for malign and harmful purposes or, despite initial promise, is unable to offer real liberation from the material and spiritual impoverishment of the physical world and - in Schweblin's telling - the darkness of human nature. It's inventive and propulsive, and to the very end I wasn't expecting that every single thread would end badly - it's a slippery, layered book that has a strong, dark vision but doesn't at any point feel gratuitous. It's powerful.
(also - Fever Dream, which increasingly feels like an out-an-out modern classic)
