User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I read right to the end of Klara and the Sun to be really sure there wasn't a moment, a dark depth lurking somewhere, that would make me love it. I pushed through an underwhelming narrative of recycled sci-fi themes, waiting, surely, for Nobel Prize-worthy goodness. The kind that made me fall for Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day. But I couldn't find it.
So then I went to read the starred reviews from critics who raved about this book to see where I went wrong. I read the gushing Publisher's Weekly review that cites the author's "astute observations of human nature" as being star-worthy, pulling the following quote as an example:
“There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her,” Klara says.
...and I couldn't help wondering why the best example they could come up with reads like something from the most saccharine of children's novels.
I turned next to Kirkus who uses examples of solar-powered androids and vague mentions of pollution to present this as some kind of climate change/dying planet parable. Despite listing few, if any, original ideas in the body of the review, and, in fact, declaring it "familiar territory" to readers of Aldiss or Collodi, Kirkus slaps a star on the work anyway.
Is it just that no critics will dare say anything bad about an author of Ishiguro's standing? Is this also why I felt such a complete disconnect between what the reviews said about Atwood's The Testaments and what I was actually reading?
Klara and the Sun takes on the same old sci-fi themes authors have been exploring for decades, and does nothing new with them, in my opinion. A girl called Josie and her mother purchase an AF (Artificial Friend) called Klara, who then observes their interactions, plus the interactions between Josie and her friend, Rick. Much time is spent looking at the sun, sketching, and navel-gazing. I cannot figure out if we are actually supposed to be surprised by the info Ishiguro reveals halfway or not, because it is obvious from the moment Klara is purchased.
The story is deliberately vague, which here feels lazy rather than mysterious. Klara's stiff AI narrative voice makes for a dull read, and it is even more disappointing to discover we are not being led anywhere remarkable.
And I would like to say here that I actually have very high tolerance for quiet character studies about human behaviour. Give me some Anne Tyler or Celeste Ng any day. But I sadly did not find this to be a very successful one of those either. Klara, Josie, Rick, and Josie's mother are not characters I will remember. This whole book lacked a spark for me.
Rating: really liked it
This seems to be quite a polarizing book, with everyone either loving it or hating it. But
Klara and the Sun didn't elicit such strong emotions in me. It didn't wow me in any way, but I didn't hate it either. I fell squarely in the meh-meh middle.
We start off with Klara at the store, hoping to be chosen as the Artificial Friend for a family. Since she's a robot and the story is told from her perspective, her narrative comes across as a bit robotic and detached. But it fits the tone of the story, and I really enjoyed reading her growing awareness and insight. And I'm not afraid to admit that her search for her "forever home" tugged at my heartstrings.
But I got a little bit confused soon after because I'm not sure what the author is trying to say with this story. The potential for something profound is there, but the narrative doesn't get anywhere close to that. When we reach the ending, it feels convenient, as if the author ran out of steam or doesn't quite know how to wrap up all the concepts he introduced.
With this being science fiction, I have to make a comment on the science part. To me, it feels clumsy and not well-thought-out. The technology comes across as both more advanced than our current world with AI, but also less advanced with Klara's lack of understanding for how humans function. There were also concepts in here that were referred to throughout without explanation until much later in the book, and it created this artificial sense of bewilderment.
Overall, it's hard for me to know what to think of this book because it didn't say much. There was a lot of potential, but the story ended up only scratching the surface. It feels unfinished, with a fluffy slapdash ending that didn't even come close to addressing any of the worthwhile topics in here.
Rating: really liked it
Do you hear the eerie sound of trumpets informs us an unpopular review is on its way! I am not sure I read the same book everybody did. All those critics have written marvelous things about this one which made truly excited to dive into! We’re talking Nobel prize winner author! This is brand new book of the author of “Remains of the day” and “ Never Let me go”! What could possibly go wrong?
But too many things absolutely went so wrong! I felt like I stuck in mud and sunk deeper at each page! Everything I read were blurry, vague, going nowhere, no smart earth shattering twist, no sign of brilliant intelligence of the author. It was just flat and as long as I pushed harder I couldn’t get any result. When I reached the conclusion and expected to get something different at the end, another disappointment train crashed me over and over again.
The story was simple. Jodie’s mother purchased an AI( artificial friend) for her daughter to observe her and her interactions with her friend Rick. Most of the book they stare at the sun and keep sketching. If there’s some reference about climate change, air pollution or any other sensitive issues I couldn’t catch it. So it doesn’t seem like a dystopian or apocalyptic story.
After seeing those five stars and high recommendations I feel weird! Did I miss something everyone easily got? Did I lose my objective perception? Am I not smart enough to understand the deeper meaning of the story?
Maybe I was in the wrong mood and this was wrong book for me to read at the very wrong time!
But I still give my two stars, covering my ears not to hear your boos! As my final decision : unfortunately this book is definitely not for me!
Rating: really liked it
I tore through the ARC in less than 24 hours, and now I'm just sitting here with tears in my eyes, completely and utterly satisfied. I love Klara, the insightful and noble Artificial Friend, and I wish she were real so that I could hug her and tell her how much she means to me. This book is all my favorite things rolled into one--sci-fi, mythology, suspense and mystery, and coming of age (yes, of a robot). It's a beautiful and powerful exploration of important questions about humanity: what makes a person? What makes a life worth living and remembering? How do our beliefs and observations change the world, and vice-versa? In many ways, I think Klara and the Sun is a companion piece of sorts to Never Let Me Go (probably my favorite Ishiguro novel until this one), examining one world's solution to achieve the same type of "improvement" to society and human life that NLMG did. The goal is similar, but the means are almost opposite in the two books--two sides of the same coin. (Ugh, it's hard to express without specific references, but I don't want to even risk spoiling anything!) I cannot WAIT for everyone to read this book because I need to discuss and debate it!!!!
Rating: really liked it
Ishiguro has an unparalleled ability to craft dystopian societies which are simultaneously shocking and disorientating, yet oddly familiar -- they are believable because they take present values or ideas and stretch them to the extreme. He also has an unmatched ability to construct scenes in which misunderstandings cause conflict, so awkward and frustrating that the reader wishes they could intervene.
Klara and the Sun imagines what the future of artificial intelligence and genetic-engineering could entail in this incredibly suspenseful novel which presents a myriad of ethical dilemmas without providing answers or solutions. This ambiguity is deliberate, encouraging the (probably pretty confused) reader to make rational connections between our present society and this imagined one. What steps would have to be taken right now to reach that state?
I found the first 100 pages a little slow as the plot didn't seem to be developing any further than what the blurb described -- it was just a book about AI -- but stick with it, as the narrative soon unravels in subtle and complex ways.
Rating: really liked it
I was super into this book in the first half and could have easily given it 4 stars. It was charming to see the world through the eyes of an innocent and optimistic AI, and the audiobook narration added to the whimsy. I was excited to see all the potential developments unfold among the protagonist and the family she lives with. Unfortunately, the story didn’t go anywhere from there. There weren’t any groundbreaking observations of human nature, nor enough emotional stakes to make the book special.
Rating: really liked it
I love a good robot story, and Ishiguro’s novel about an “artificial friend” to a sick young girl is no exception. Although it takes place in a dystopian future, the robots aren’t a force for evil. Instead, they serve as companions to keep people company. This book made me think about what life with super intelligent robots might look like—and whether we’ll treat these kinds of machines as pieces of technology or as something more.
Rating: really liked it
This book made me sad. Sad not because of the story but because I read it expecting the brilliance that the author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go can deliver in spades — and instead I got... well... this. A dull and lackluster book that slowly fizzles out under the burden of its unengaging narrative voice that neuters most of the impact from its bleak ending hiding inside the world’s saddest, most delusional servile optimism.
Because by the time I plodded to the end,
exhausted from the oppressive naïveté of the childlike servile narrator, this banality (that inside it, admittedly, packs a bit of a punch) actually started to make sense at its face value, because I had no desire left to care:
“There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”
It’s a frustratingly vague story about a childlike AI - the titular solar-powered Klara - who is made to be a faithful and servile companion for a young teenage girl. Klara is a robot who is devoted to her kid Josie, observing the life around her and worshipping the Sun in the manner that stops being cute and becomes a bit disturbing.
Klara’s voice full of childlike innocence mixed with some stilted “robotic” constructions, sadly, does not help create an interesting narration. She’s supposedly very observant and apparently very intelligent — but I know it only because we are told so by the other characters while Klara herself, through her inner monologue and actions, comes across as little but a humanoid teddy bear.
For the life of me I could not understand what made her such a great companion, and how supposed supreme observational skills and intellect coexisted with such bland and dull inner (and outer, really) voice.
Me, after 250+ pages of Klara’s pensive yet unrelentless optimism.
And the vagueness of so many things in the story — the things that Klara’s narrative attention just slides off before anything becomes interesting — is really irritating.
It’s not vague in a way that lends mystery feel but in a way that makes me wonder if the author himself had no idea about how certain things are supposed to work in this world, therefore sticking with just the blurry outlines and barest bones of worldbuilding. The focus is on Klara and Josie and maybe Rick — but they are not interesting enough to compensate for the vaguely futuristic dystopian sketch of the world around them. And all the potential in the relationships around Klara - the awful mother-daughter dynamic, the mother-Rick confrontation, the strange mother-son relationship, the absent father, the tensions between the elite and those left behind - all that was barely a glimpse as we kept circling back to Klara’s obsession with her owner and the Sun.
The story itself lacks much of the subtlety that I came to expect from Ishiguro. Things that are warped and wrong are telegraphed loud and clear (think those interactions at the party between both children and adults, and most of Josie’s mother’s actions, and the lifted/unlifted contrasts through Rick and all the others who have the privilege he does not). The lines are painfully clear, drawn starkly like those frustratingly often appearing boxes in Klara’s overwhelmed vision —
all giving it a feel of a story that wants to make itself obvious for a younger audience, but can be a bit trite and simplistic for older readers. Not to mention that the idea itself of (view spoiler)
[replacing a dead child with a robot who learns to mimic that child’s behavior in order to lessen the sadness of a parent of a dead child (hide spoiler)] is a concept too ridiculous to ever really take seriously for adults, but something that can be tried and debunked for younger readers. I do wonder if it was conceived as a sad tale for kids and got aged up to appeal to a wider audience?
I expect better from a writer who penned The Remains of the Day - with all the subtlety and nostalgia and criticism of the unfair social order and musings on human nature and love and servility. Read that one instead.
It seems to have hit a perfect note for many readers, but for me it fell flat. And its denouement, meant to be pensive and bittersweet and maybe a bit anger-provoking behind the facade of sweetness made me just sigh in sadness that I got through all those pages for *this*. Because I kept hoping for the story to redeem its stiff bland journey by suddenly growing some metaphorical teeth in the end — and yes,
Klara’s end (view spoiler)[basically as a discarded toy because ultimately nobody ever came to see her as a person and not a tool or a toy to be discarded once used because your worth itself isn’t intrinsic but dependent on others placing value in you (hide spoiler)] was quietly heartbreaking and said a lot about us humans — but at that point my senses were too dulled by all the pages of Klara’s obsessively naive narration to really care and feel the impact as it should have been.
Sadly, the story ended up apathetically lifeless, and that’s unfortunate.
Maybe I’m too much of a cynic, and overwhelming majority of readers, judging by the overall rating, would disagree with my gripes, but it is what it is.
2 stars. It pains me to rate a book by Ishiguro so low.
————
Buddy read with Stephen and Barbara.————
A much better story about an AI obsessed with the Sun is The AI That Looked at the Sun, a short story by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (my review of it is here).
Rating: really liked it
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021Human callousness and the cruelty of forgetting and changing. All captured in a near future America with some very faint glimmers of hope intertwined“Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness. I’m glad you watch everything so carefully, Klara.”One does not read Kazuo Ishiguro his works for literary fireworks on a sentence level. This is especially true for Klara and the Sun, told from the perspective of a quickly learning AI (or AF, artificial friend in the world building of Ishiguro). Her narration is initially childlike and naive and does not change that much, even with better of understanding of humanity. In a sense the writing is a bit like Haruki Murakami, with the themes being what pulls you into the book. Not to say Klara hasn't got an endearing and immersive narrative voice, because I was definitely hooked to keep on reading.
Ishiguro describes a near future world were inequality of changes are entrenched by genetics and artificial friends are companions available to the elite, to assist in homeschooling and keeping children company. The first part of the book details how Klara is selected by Josie, and reminded me quite a lot in feel and tone to the Sonmi-451 section of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. After this initial chapter we return to more familiar Ishiguro themes like servitude (The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go both come to mind) with Klara interacting with Josie and her mother, slowly learning more of the world and her purpose in it.
Klara as AI has a lot of magical thinking, and in contrast to the more familiar Terminator AI version or the Matrix, she is set on strictly following her designed goal to care for fragile Josie. There are important themes of loss and coping woven in, and questions on what make humans unique, if anything, in a world where artificial intelligence becomes ever more potent.
There is also a tint of doomed love with neighbour Rick and Josie, almost anime like (I was reminded a bit of Makoto Shinkai's your name.), but with a poisoned dagger edge embedded in it. The gravity of the world as it is, Ishiguro seems to say, is maybe too strong even versus all our good intentions. Also quite filmic is a meeting at the end of the book in an Edward Hopper like restaurant, where there are decisions made over dreams and futures, based on events and interactions from long ago.
Without self regard, Klara truly embodies love, in a way that feels superior to what we humans seem to be able to muster. She does not fundamentally change, but her surroundings do and people and time move on.
Hence the ending felt for me emotionally impactful and a perfect illustration of something the author said during the digital launch events:
There is something very cruel about the human condition
Rating: really liked it
One of the worst editing jobs I have seen.
Klara is an artificial friend, AF, who is powered by the sun and sits in the store waiting for a little boy or girl to take her home. Until one day, Klara sees a child approaching the store....
This book could have been great, but it was B O R I N G and S L O W! It didn't even have chapters. It had Parts. On the audiobook, each of these parts was between 1 and 2 hours long.
The prose was horrible. It was very staccato because it was supposed to sound like a robot. "I did this. I did this. I did this."
As an introvert, the opening of this book intrigued me, because it was filled with Klara's observations of the world. However, it lasted way too long to the point that it was getting painful. The author also lost the emotional appeal of this book by trying to go for more a robot feel, very mechanical. The ending was also so lackluster and didn't have the emotional payoff that I was looking for. And ugh Ishiguro needs to get some original material for his next book (if you read Klara and the Sun and read Never Let Me Go, you will know what I am talking about).
Overall, Klara and the Sun would have been better off as a short story. And I'm angry. I'm angry because Ishiguro can write but this book didn't reflect that. The editor should have given better review notes and cleaned up this book before publication. Ishiguro has proven that he is a great writer. He has the writing chops so this book is such a tragedy.
2022 Reading Schedule
Jan Animal Farm
Feb Lord of the Flies
Mar The Da Vinci Code
Apr Of Mice and Men
May Memoirs of a Geisha
Jun Little Women
Jul The Lovely Bones
Aug Charlotte's Web
Sep Life of Pi
Oct Dracula
Nov Gone with the Wind
Dec The Secret Garden
Connect With Me!
Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook
Rating: really liked it
If NEVER LET ME GO is your favorite Ishiguro, he is serving up something very similar here. Ishiguro can hop between genres, but this is surprisingly close to that familiar territory, though with enough differences to be its own unique thing.
What you may recognize: the near-future setting that is mostly similar to the present but gradually we learn of some astonishing differences; the first-person narrator that is a kind of outsider who doesn't fully understand the world they live in; themes of loneliness and what makes a person human. Even the style of the prose is familiar, Klara and Kathy H. can feel quite similar sometimes. (I re-read NLMG just a few months ago so it's very fresh in my head.) With all that said, this is a slower book, one that focuses more on parents and children, and one that examines class.
It's interesting to me that in NLMG and KATS, Ishiguro takes on two common tropes of science-fiction: clones and robots. He also both addresses and never addresses the most common questions books about them explore: whether and to what extent they are human. Here, Klara is our first-person narrator guiding us through the world and there is never a question that she feels empathy and hope. The book still explores the ways Klara sees the world, how she is more or less human, but it is not the book's central question, and yet it also is. As you'd expect if you have read Ishiguro, it's quite a delicate business, the way he works in his themes, and here he beats around the bush a little less.
This is also quite slow, Klara's plot unfolds gradually but the real plot that Klara doesn't quite understand doesn't really unfold until nearly 80% of the way through the book. You definitely need to be ready to invest some time in this one. But it does all come together and from there it's quick.
I wouldn't say this is up there with my favorite Ishiguro's--I still like NLMG better, I would say REMAINS OF THE DAY is my favorite but I haven't read it in at least a decade so I'm due for a refresh--for me it falls in the middle. But an Average Ishiguro is still something to be happy about.
Rating: really liked it
“Klara and the Sun” is the first novel Ishiguro has published since he won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature which – of course - means that this is one of the publishing events of the year, but given this author's output producing a new novel roughly every five years means it's also coming right on time. I was entranced by his most recent novel “The Buried Giant” which reads like the most psychologically-compelling fable or fantasy tale. Yet, even though I have a high regard for his work, I was initially skeptical of the premise of “Klara and the Sun” which is told from the perspective of an Artificial Friend or AF who at the beginning of the story is waiting on a shop shelf for an adolescent child to purchase her. It sounds similar to the film series Toy Story or perhaps a bit like Pinocchio. This isn't a coincidence since Ishiguro described in a recent interview how he initially conceived of this story as a children's book. Additionally, given that this new novel is also about genetic engineering, the question of what it means to be human and it's set in an unspecified future point means it's also reminiscent of his novel “Never Let Me Go”. But the magic of Ishiguro's writing is that any reservations I had were quickly forgotten as I got into the drama of this suspenseful and moving story.
It's difficult to discuss this book without giving spoilers, but I'm going to do my best to avoid them. This isn't simply a saccharine tale because it's sweetness is also what makes it unsettling as we follow Klara's gradual understanding of the world around her and the expectations placed upon her. She's a naïve, highly perceptive and well-intentioned AF who has no qualms with the purpose she's been designed for: to support, nurture and give unqualified friendship to her child owner. When she is eventually purchased she does exactly that and her loyalty means that she goes to great lengths to be the best companion she can. Her faith in the power of the Sun drives her to perform a charmingly ardent act to help her child and around this time we also learn about the deeper purpose for which she was purchased. This means that these two narrative threads which are light and dark intertwine at almost the same point making the reader feel beguiled as well as horrified. It's a powerful effect which makes it a gripping story as well as one which raises lingering questions about the binding force of love.
Read my full review of Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro on LonesomeReader
Rating: really liked it
There is so much nuance to this book I—
I will come back with some more thoughts later but I really enjoyed this!
Rating: really liked it
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker PrizeKlara is hyper-observant, always watching those around her closely. Noticing if, say, a flicker of sadness passes across someone’s features. Klara is also an Artificial Friend, a lifelike android destined to become a companion for a human child. Is it empathy, the way she notices, observes, adjusts her behaviour accordingly? Or something else?
Ishiguro excels at narrators who are detached, almost affectless, without being cold. Of this type, Klara is both exemplar and simulacrum. Her sensitivity to other people’s feelings is heightened to an ‘uncanny valley’ degree that makes her both deeply sympathetic and a little creepy. Her narration is formal, punctilious, scrupulously accurate. Her machine’s eye view of the world—which in unfamiliar or confusing settings, renders visually as a bizarre, tessellated jumble—keeps the reader slightly off keel.
As
Klara and the Sun plays out, it feels almost like a Victorian-era novel: a friendless girl of low means is engaged by a wealthy family to act as a companion for their ailing daughter; the household mostly treat her as invisible but then start to take her into their confidences; there is a budding romance across class lines, and hints at dark family secrets.
The final act brings back the sci-fi with a unique dilemma for Klara. Without getting into spoilers, it’s a fresh and original A.I. tale, one that isn’t just another variation on
Pinocchio. Faith and rationality; love and devotion; loneliness and grief. Which, if any, traits are uniquely, unprogrammably human? Big philosophical questions that are posed with Ishiguro’s typical subtlety and understatement.
Rating: really liked it
Sometimes, you have to put your fate in the hands of the universe.
I am not a person who believes in manifestation, or fate, or signs. I am not spiritual or mystical or otherwise kinda kooky. I do not know anything about astrology - I can barely remember my main one, and the words "moon" and "rising" make me break out in hives.
But I do have one prevailing belief system in this life, and that is taking advantage of every book sale, even if you do not know the books-for-sale in question.
When I happened upon a vaguely Black Friday-related book sale involving the words "buy 2, get 1 free," I blacked out immediately. I blindly navigated the universe until I had three paid-for books (at 66 point 6 repeating percent cost) and a receipt in my hand.
This meant buying the following:
- a book I didn't really like in a series I kind of did
- a book I had previously had no intention of reading, but which was on many must-read-in-a-lifetime lists, one of my many weaknesses
- this book, whose title sounded vaguely familiar, and whose cover I liked, but whose synopsis I knew literally nothing about.
And yet...look how well it worked out for me. Another point for my personal religion.
I did not at all care for the other book I've read by this author, but if you had told me there were two working authors named Kazuo Ishiguro and Never Let Me Go was by the boring one...well, minus the same very specific niche of sci-fi they both exist in, I wouldn't have known.
Where that book bored me to a light and tender sleep, this was compelling always. While the writing of that one did nothing for me, I found this one pretty lovely. While the characters in that book instantly leapt out of my memory, these have lingered at least a little. And while the relationships and dynamics between those bozos were the worst part of Never Let Me Go, for me, they were the most interesting part of this.
And okay, yes, this still dragged a little for me, and okay, yes, it wasn't perfect, and okay, yes, I'm simplifying how much I liked even the above list items for the sake of comparison...
Even so, this was a nice boon to several clauses of my book beliefs, namely:
a) read books that don't sound good to you
b) read books by authors you haven't historically liked
c) judge books by their covers
d) judge books by their titles
e) go in blind
f) buy books, all the time, always, with any excuse or reason
Bottom line: I love when things that should go wrong for me go right!
------------------
pre-reviewjudging a book by its cover wins again.
review to come / 3.5 stars
------------------
currently-reading updatesyou've heard of buying a book for its cover, but what about buying a book for its title / cover combo?
clear ur shit book 33
quest 15: read a book with a female or non-binary MC------------------
tbr reviewhappy thanksgiving! i am thankful for the buy 2, get 1 free sale i acquired this during
