Klara and the Sun

Narrator Sura Siu will be a fresh voice for many listeners, and her wonderfully subdued narration proves perfect for portraying Klara, the all-too-observant "AF" (artificial friend) purchased by a mother for her ailing child. Assigned to look after Josie, Klara slowly discovers she is being groomed to be the failing child's replacement. On this charged premise novelist Kazuo Ishiguro builds a complex story of the bond between master and servant, the relationship between dominance and dependence, both of which are reminiscent of his bestselling REMAINS OF THE DAY. Siu conveys a range of contrasting voices--male and female, adult and adolescent, American and British. In this challenging assignment, she proves herself a performer of rare grace, subtlety, and virtuosity whose haunting portrayal of Ishiguro's more than human main character will linger in listeners' minds for days. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Starred review from June 1, 2021

Nobel Prize winner Ishiguro's eighth novel (after The Buried Giant)--a poignant, ultimately celebratory exploration of what it means to be human--is beautifully realized in narrator Sura Siu's virtuosic performance of Klara, a solar-powered AF (artificial friend) who has been purchased for Josie, a critically ill teenager. Through the narrow frame of Klara's earnest and childlike first-person point of view, a disturbing near-future dystopia is gradually revealed; technology has "lifted" children to exceptional intelligence, but has also "substituted" many adults out of jobs, resulting in a starkly divided society that seems to be teetering on the brink of collapse. With hopes of finding a cure for Josie's mysterious illness, Klara tries to learn all she can from her experiences; in the process, she acquires not just knowledge but also humanity. Ishiguro's precise, deceptively simple prose, coupled with Klara's limited viewpoint, creates a stifling sense of foreboding that Siu wonderfully contrasts with her spirited voices for the novel's often-exasperating human characters. Siu's depictions of Klara, Josie, and Josie's teenage friends will likely resonate with many YA listeners (and their parents). VERDICT This powerful look at the varied and often negative consequences of modern technology underscores the fragility and preciousness of human beings--an all-too-acute awareness in a world coping with a global pandemic and widespread social upheaval.--Beth Farrell, Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

It’s been six years since the release of Ishiguro’s previous novel, The Buried Giant. The waiting has been worth it. In another superb offering of speculative fiction, Ishiguro treats us to a story of love, familial devotion and sacrifice, while posing difficult ethical and philosophical questions. Klara is our narrator. She’s an AF (although this is never detailed, it is assumed that this stands for Artificial Friend). She could be defined as an android, but this fails to detail Klara’s gifts. She’s insightful and continues learning as she sees more of the world. She’s chosen by a young teenager, Josie, whose fragility signals an illness which Klara aims to help. The narrative centres on Josie’s health, her relationships with Klara, her mother and estranged father, and with neighbour and lifelong friend, Rick. Behind the scenes, another man is working on a very different type of portrait of Josie. This imagined world is America, sometime in the future, where children are given the opportunity to be ‘lifted’ – gaining greater cognitive ability through genetic editing. Only then do they have the competitive advantage to be assured of admission to university. Josie has undergone this process, but her failing health (perhaps caused by the same editing process) endangers not just her education prospects, but also her life. Each lifted child’s secondary education is spent with online tutors. The only time spent with other children is at ‘interaction meetings’, designed to accustom children to others of the same age before they each leave home. Being alone for most of the time has necessitated the introduction of AFs like Klara. Klara is nourished by the solar power of the (personified) Sun. She also rejoices as the Sun’s patterns fall over other characters. She’s attentive to Josie’s needs and her belief in the Sun’s regenerative power sees her plead with him as he sets, in an attempt to heal Josie. Rick hasn’t been lifted and remains unable to access college education. He and Josie share a tight bond, which is extended to include Klara. The mother wants Josie to have the advantages other children enjoy, but also has a Plan B should this fail. Ishiguro’s use of Klara as our eyes into this brave new world is a masterstroke. We might have some preconceived ideas of what this type of world might look like, but we learn its ‘rules’ as Klara learns them. She is naive to begin with but is blessed with insight. She is a type of self-adaptive artificial intelligence (this description reduces her to a machine – something Ishiguro’s characterisation of her does not). This is a digital, algorithmic world where people don’t ‘guess’, they give ‘estimates’. As the novel progresses, with Klara’s insight and Josie’s failing health, Ishiguro lets us chew over several ethical dilemmas. How much would we be willing to sacrifice to save a loved one? Is Klara just a machine? More than a machine? Or for all intents and purposes a different species of human? Philosophically, we are asked to question what ‘existence’ might be. Klara is the embodiment of the question as to whether artificial intelligence could adequately replace a person. Would you treat a kind, caring artificial intelligence as though it were human? Klara enjoys an astute mind, but is this enough? Does she possess an emotional heart? A soul? Is this even possible? Ishiguro makes us question ourselves, too. Are we so different? Superior? Inferior? Threatened? This novel is timely and profound and is delivered with the grace and poise of a master. Unarguably brilliant.  Reviewed by Bob Moore

Anyone who has read Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s masterpieces knows that, in his works, little is as it first appears. Situations are not quite as his unreliable narrators believe. First-person protagonists speak in formal prose that sounds not quite right. And his later works are wonderfully unclassifiable—not quite detective fiction or dystopian sagas but borrowing from these forms while veering into original terrain. He continues his genre-twisting ways with Klara and the Sun, a return to the dystopian tenor of Never Let Me Go that, like that work, explores whether science could—or should—manipulate the future. Klara is an AF, an Artificial Friend available for purchase. Like Stevens the butler in The Remains of the Day, she speaks in quirky locutions such as “I was able to bring several speculations together.” She and other AFs are on display in a store, where the prime real estate is the front window. The advantages of that position include access to the Sun, from which AFs derive “nourishment.” A teenager named Josie, suffering from an unspecified illness, insists that her Mother purchase Klara. What follows is the story of Josie’s home life and Klara’s role in the family’s affairs. Among them are the Mother’s trauma from the death of another daughter, a young man sweet on Josie and, most provocatively, the issue of whether science can correct injustices wrought by illness or one’s station in life. Ishiguro is an expert at slowly doling out information to build tension. The wonder of this book is that he incorporates many elements, from environmental damage to genetic testing, without the story seeming heavy-handed. But the predominant theme in Klara and the Sun is loneliness. “Humans, in their wish to escape loneliness,” Klara says, “made maneuvers that were very complex and hard to fathom.” As Ishiguro notes in this brilliant book, each person has their own Sun, a source that gives them strength, and feels enervated when the source leaves them in shadow.