Little Eyes, by Samantha Schweblin: Ooh. This was like a Black Mirror episode in book form, and also reminiscent of Ted Chiang. The hook of the plot is essentially: surveillance furbies. Delightfully, the short sections that jump from narrator to narrator and place to place (most of the characters repeat numerous times, but there are a few one-offs) mimic the technology of the “little eyes” themselves, like hyperlinks into different stories, and every horrifying ending is horrifying in a different way.
Blue Ticket, by Sophie McIntosh: There’s something very impressive to me about an author who can create multiple, distinct dystopias (this is probably the case with Schweblin, also). As with The Water Cure, I enjoyed this. I did wish that the central character felt less elusive, more concrete; I had a hard time conjuring her in my mind or even remembering her name.
A Burning, by Megha Majumdar: Ahhh…this is so (not to be punny with the name of a main character, but…) lovely. The three voices that tell the story are so fully realized and endearing in different ways, and the prose is very musical – in the “Lovely” narrated chapters, this comes from the author’s deployment of the present participle in place of simple present tense, which sounds like an easy trick but, I suspect, would sound contrived in less capable hands. It’s also wrenching.
