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Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin review – timely visions of a virtual reality
Strangers connect in this artful exploration of solitude and empathy in a globalised world
Justine Jordan
Saturday 25 April 2020
E
very technological innovation both changes its human users and uncovers something new about our nature. In this ingenious novel, Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin conducts an unnerving thought experiment: if an individual could be virtually inserted into the life of a random stranger, anywhere in the world, what effects would that have on them both? And what hidden truths would be revealed?
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| Samantha Schweblin |
Eyes follows her gripping 2017 novella Fever Dream, a destabilising parable about GM farming and maternal anxiety, and a story collection of domestic surrealism, Mouthful of Birds; all three books have been long- or shortlisted for the International Booker. In her new novel the gadget that’s sweeping the globe is called a kentuki. It’s not much more, says one character, than “a cell phone with legs”, but the camera and speaker are housed within the felt-covered, remotely propelled body of a toy animal – rabbit or panda, dragon or crow, the buyer or “keeper” decides. What the keeper can’t choose is who the “dweller” connecting with the robot and watching online is, while dwellers have no control over where, and with whom, they “wake up”. As with a human life, the stakes are high; there is one connection per kentuki, one mind per body. When the keeper destroys their pet or forgets to charge its batteries, or the dweller disconnects, it’s game over, no replays. If death is what gives life reality, the life of a kentuki is real.
Schweblin familiarises the reader by artful degrees, introducing us to dwellers and keepers around the world, all reacting differently to the new gizmos. For Emilia in Peru, globalisation has meant profound loss; her grown-up son has been “snatched away” to Hong Kong for a glittering career. When he gives her a connection, she turns on her computer and wakes up in a flat in Germany, where she enjoys being a pet bunny for a young woman: attention at last, and day-to-day intimacy. In Mexico, purposeless Alina finds herself choosing between a crow and a dragon for “the miraculous distraction” of unboxing a new product. In Antigua, a stifled little boy called Marvin who is grieving for his mother wakes up at the top of the globe and goes looking for snow: “At least in this other life, he wouldn’t let himself be locked up.” Italian Enzo falls into easy companionship with the mole that follows him around his greenhouse. And the consequences of capitalism never stop evolving: in Zagreb Grigor starts a business buying and tending connections through multiple tablets, so he can offer tailor-made experiences to those who want more consumer choice than the market officially offers.
There has always been a tinge of horror to Schweblin’s work, and here she gets full effect from violent interludes where the connections go sour. That hoary staple of an inanimate object coming alive can be just as frightening when you’ve paid for it to happen – even, or perhaps especially, when it’s a cuddly panda rolling closer with unknown intent. But as she works through the implications of her premise in a nimble, fast-moving narrative, what’s most impressive is the way she foregrounds her characters’ inner hopes and fears.
The kentuki can hear and translate speech, but only respond with animal-appropriate squeaks or purrs, so the first issue is always communication: whether dweller and keeper will connect in the wider world. For Alina, the relationship is about control. She wants to keep her crow as nothing more than a toy, but gradually it becomes the conduit and eventually target for her rage and shame. Marvin finds he has more power and agency when negotiating the world as a kentuki: “Marvin was no longer a boy with a dragon; he was a dragon with a boy inside him.” When the characters happen by chance to glimpse their kentuki selves, they feel an overwhelming tenderness for the ball of plastic and felt that is the vessel for their consciousness. In a disassociated world, they are seeing themselves at last.
Like Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, in which magical doors act as portals out of conflict zones, Little Eyes has much to say about connection and empathy in a globalised world. On a personal level, its investigation into solitude and online experience becomes only more poignant in a global lockdown. Marvin has never seen snow; he longs to roll his little dragon into an untouched snowbank, to leave his mark. It would be “just like touching the other end of the world with your own fingertips”. If a virtual reality is all we can have, we will still reach out to explore its limits.
• Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell, is published by Oneworld (RRP £14.99).
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