A review by micaelabrody
Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin

dark reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

this book was like one of the great black mirror episodes - transparently a parable and somewhat of a morality tale but with enough complexity and nuance to keep it interesting. i liked the length - any longer and it would have gotten old, but schweblin already proved with the tremendous Fever Dream (another well-executed unsubtle parable) that she can do the Short Fucked Up Novel well. 

this book is at its best when contrasting horrors great and small, on both sides of the kentuki relationship. from the book’s very first vignette - a horrifying yet resigned sort of “this is where we will inevitably end up, let’s get it out of the way” pedophilic extortion scam - to the relatively benign antagonism between one of the dwellers and her keeper’s new boyfriend, schweblin deftly turns a sharp eye to every single participant and doesn’t shy away from laying blame at everyone’s feet. in the end abuses and struggles don’t need to be criminal or heinous for them to be really distressing to both the characters and readers - schweblin is careful to emphasize that these are humans on both ends of the screen, even as her characters alternately forget and remember that themselves. 

there were in my opinion one too many neat endings (enzo’s and alina’s endings did work, but felt a hair too close to Just Desserts for a book that was determined to look at its characters wholly) but most resolve themselves with a discomfort that made me squirm.

when i started out online i was careful to always keep my boundaries secure. since then i’ve joined a zillion people who have gotten lax - i’ve revealed my name or my location, often thoughtlessly, many times. little eyes was not exactly shy about its message of the joys and dangers of the globalizing and connecting power of the internet, but it absolutely conveyed it well. i don’t know that i really relished the reading experience, but i sure came away feeling some kind of way.
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