Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Reviewed by: Beth Weimer, Communications Specialist
Genre: Fiction, Sci-Fi
Suggested Age: Adults, Teens
What is the book about?: In a not so distant and slightly dystopian future, an Artificial Friend waits in a store window, hoping to be selected by a lonely child. Klara’s exceptional observational skills lead her to be chosen by sweet Josie, who suffers from a mysterious illness. As Josie’s caring companion, Klara serves the family loyally and fulfills her purpose, witnessing the love, grief, and tensions within the household as they all try to navigate the machinations of a society ruthlessly using technology to avoid its own ‘slow fade.’
My Review: I wanted to love this book as I did Never Let Me Go, and I appreciate the premise and Ishiguro’s deliberate style, but it just never clicked for me. The amount of detail paid to certain irrelevant elements was frustrating, when the most interesting aspects of the story are barely mentioned and never explained. Ultimately, I couldn’t get over the disconnect of having an AI – programmed with enough intelligence to learn human emotions and advanced science – who isn’t equipped with the basic understanding that they are solar powered and therefore invents their own mythology. Maybe that’s intentional, to illustrate how individual knowledge is limited and we all just fill in our own narrative/explanation of events and experiences, but that (and the perfect anti-climax) felt a bit lazy. The book does touch on interesting themes of life/death/technology and Klara provides an interesting perspective on the human condition, so most readers will probably still find it interesting and worthwhile.
Three Words That Describe This Book: Detailed, Strange, Bittersweet
Give This a Try if You Like… Never Let Me Go by Kazua Ishiguro; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Rating: 3/5
