There are the ‘keepers’, who buy these alluring devices off the shelf at the rather high price of $279, or are given these as presents. It also introduces the reader to the way kentukis work, the details unfolding in a couple of chapters that follow. The chapter is like a prologue, a foretaste of what is to come: the episode does not end well. So the girl who had bought it lifted it up to a chair so it - or the person ‘within’ - could have an unhindered view.Ĭreepy as this is, Little Eyes is not the girls’ story. The “plush panda bear” spun round on the three wheels hidden in its base, controlled by the unknown person at the computer screen far away, who was not willing to miss a thing. They “sat on the edge of the bed facing the camera, took off their shirts, and one by one, removed their bras”. The novel begins in South Bend, Indiana, where the first thing three young girls do when they get together is show their breasts. Someone unknown from another part of the world is digitally connected to the kentuki, and can see whatever the camera shows on his or her computer screen. If this were not weird enough, the Argentinian author makes sure that the reader is aware from the first page that the kentuki owner is in on the secret. In Little Eyes, her novel translated by Megan McDowell, the toy-like devices - a mole, a crow, bunnies, pandas, even a dragon - have webcams nestling in their eyes. But resemblances, as can be expected in Samanta Schweblin’s fictional world, are not just misleading but also indefinably sinister. Unlike Superman, who is neither bird nor plane, the kentuki resembles a furry toy and moves about like a pet on the ground. Look at the floor - it’s a toy - it’s a pet - it’s a kentuki.
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