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Bunn-O

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About this listen

With her husband stranded in a war-torn country halfway around the world, a university professor – on whom the burden of managing their small family has suddenly fallen – tries to maintain order at home. Her young daughter seems not to mind, or even really notice, the father’s absence. But as the weeks go on, mounting pressure on the narrator to balance family and work begins to take a toll.

So, when an enterprising and overeager graduate student, known only as “Schpleeven”, begs to “hack” her situation, the narrator gives in and Schpleevan connects her husband’s video calls to a plastic bunny toy.

Darkly funny and eerily prescient, Bunn-O examines technology’s unbelievable ability to connect us, as well as its extraordinary power to tear us apart.

©2020 Kate Tighe-Pigott (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC. Anthologies & Short Stories Literature & Fiction Short Stories
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I really enjoyed this story. I felt that for the most part the technology was realistic and perfectly framed the dysfunction and breakdown of a family relationship through long distance and the facsimile of presence and engagement. The most harrowing and real element being how the protagonist's needs, emotions, and boundaries were ignored and trampled by the men in her life.

The isolation and emotion are palpable, which the outstanding performance brings to life.

I think the sudden and somewhat vague heightening of the end was somewhat out of place, not necessarily from the events that took place, but how they related to everything else and the clarity with which it was told. There is a somewhat frustrating tendency of people relating anything vaguely sci-fi/ near future technology issuee with Black Mirror, which I think can be unfair, but I do think the ending is what draws this comparison most sharply.

This short story has definitely left me with a desire to read more of this author.

Near Future Fractured Family

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vaguely reminiscent of a Black Mirror episode, an interesting short story about connection in a modern world in which technology can replace in-person interactions.
good performance. nice to have this included with the membership.

dystopian short story

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