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Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara and the Sun: A novel Hardcover – March 2, 2021

by Kazuo Ishiguro (Author)

43,242 ratings

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • AGOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick!

“What stays with you in ‘Klara and the Sun’ is the haunting narrative voice—a genuinely innocent, egoless perspective on the strange behavior of humans obsessed and wounded by power, status and fear.” —Booker Prize committee

Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Knopf
Publication date

March 2, 2021
Dimensions

6.36 x 1.24 x 9.52 inches
ISBN-10

059331817X
ISBN-13

978-0593318171
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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

‘Sufficiently generous and liberal to be open to all students of high caliber, even some who haven’t benefited from genetic editing.’
Highlighted by 3,539 Kindle readers
‘Yes. Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.’
Highlighted by 3,533 Kindle readers
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness. I’m glad you watch everything so carefully, Klara.’
Highlighted by 2,888 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of March 2021: When he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize, the committee noted how Ishiguro “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” In this beautiful novel, Ishiguro presents an “Artificial Friend,” a robot girl with artificial intelligence designed as a playmate for real children. It is a simultaneously heartbreaking and heart-mending story about the abyss we may never cross. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review

Review

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK •A BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick • ONE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR •ONE OF BILL GATES'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR •ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Time, NPR, Washington Post, Vogue, USA Today, Town & Country, The Guardian, Vulture, and more

“One of the most affecting and profound novels Ishiguro has written….I'll go for broke and call Klara and the Sun a masterpiece that will make you think about life, mortality, the saving grace of love: in short, the all of it.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR

“A delicate, haunting story, steeped in sorrow and hope.”
—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“What stays with you in ‘Klara and the Sun’ is the haunting narrative voice—a genuinely innocent, egoless perspective on the strange behavior of humans obsessed and wounded by power, status and fear.” —Booker Prize committee

“It aspires to enchantment, or to put it another way, reenchantment, the restoration of magic to a disenchanted world. Ishiguro drapes realism like a thin cloth over a primordial cosmos. Every so often, the cloth slips, revealing the old gods, the terrible beasts, the warring forces of light and darkness.”
—Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic

“Ishiguro’s prose is soft and quiet. It feels like the perfect book to curl up with on a Sunday afternoon. He allows the story to unfold slowly and organically, revealing enough on every page to continue piquing the reader’s curiosity. The novel is an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures...a poignant meditation on love and loneliness”
—Maggie Sprayregen, The Associated Press

“For four decades now, Ishiguro has written eloquently about the balancing act of remembering without succumbing irrevocably to the past. Memory and the accounting of memory, its burdens and its reconciliation, have been his subjects… Klara and the Sun complements [Ishiguro’s] brilliant vision…There’s no narrative instinct more essential, or more human.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A prayer is a postcard asking for a favor, sent upward. Whether our postcards are read by anyone has become the searching doubt of Ishiguro’s recent novels, in which this master, so utterly unlike his peers, goes about creating his ordinary, strange, godless allegories.”
—James Wood, The New Yorker

“One of the joys of Ishiguro's novels is the way they recall and reframe each other, almost like the same stories told in different formats...Again and again, Ishiguro asks: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have a self? And how much of that self can and should we give to others?”
—NPR

“Moving and beautiful… an unequivocal return to form, a meditation in the subtlest shades on the subject of whether our species will be able to live with everything it has created… [A] feverish read, [a] one-sitter… Few writers who’ve ever lived have been able to create moods of transience, loss and existential self-doubt as Ishiguro has — not art about the feelings, but the feelings themselves.”
—The Los Angeles Times

“As with Ishiguro’s other works, the rich inner reflections of his protagonists offer big takeaways, and Klara’s quiet but astute observations of human nature land with profound gravity . . . This dazzling genre-bending work is a delight.”
—Publishers Weekly [starred review]

“A haunting fable of a lonely, moribund world that is entirely too plausible.”
—Kirkus Reviews [starred review]

Praise from the UK:

“There is something so steady and beautiful about the way Klara is always approaching connection, like a Zeno’s arrow of the heart. People will absolutely love this book, in part because it enacts the way we learn how to love. Klara and the Sun is wise like a child who decides, just for a little while, to love their doll. “What can children know about genuine love?” Klara asks. The answer, of course, is everything.”
—Anne Enright, The Guardian

“Flawless . . . This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go, with which it shares a DNA of emotional openness, the quality of letting us see ourselves from the outside, and a vision of humanity which — while not exactly optimistic — is tender, touching and true.”
—John Self, The Times

“With its hushed intensity of emotion, this fable about robot love and loneliness confirms Ishiguro as a master prose stylist.”
—Ian Thomson, The Evening Standard

“It is innocence that forms Ishiguro’s major subject, explored in novels at once familiar and strange, which only gradually display their true and devastating significance.”
—Jon Day, The Financial Times

“The novel is a masterpiece of great beauty, meticulous control and, as ever, clear, simple prose.”
—Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times

“A deft dystopian fable about the innocence of a robot that asks big questions about existence”
—The Financial Times

About the Author

KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His eight previous works of fiction have earned him many honors around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His work has been translated into over fifty languages, and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both made into acclaimed films, have each sold more than 2 million copies. He was given a knighthood in 2018 for Services to Literature. He also holds the decorations of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

When we were new, Rosa and I were mid-store, on the magazines table side, and could see through more than half of the window. So we were able to watch the outside – the office workers hurrying by, the taxis, the runners, the tourists, Beggar Man and his dog, the lower part of the RPO Building. Once we were more settled, Manager allowed us to walk up to the front until we were right behind the window display, and then we could see how tall the RPO Building was. And if we were there at just the right time, we would see the Sun on his journey, crossing between the building tops from our side over to the RPO Building side.

When I was lucky enough to see him like that, I’d lean my face forward to take in as much of his nourishment as I could, and if Rosa was with me, I’d tell her to do the same. After a minute or two, we’d have to return to our positions, and when we were new, we used to worry that because we often couldn’t see the Sun from mid-store, we’d grow weaker and weaker. Boy AF Rex, who was alongside us then, told us there was nothing to worry about, that the Sun had ways of reaching us wherever we were. He pointed to the floorboards and said, ‘That’s the Sun’s pattern right there. If you’re worried, you can just touch it and get strong again.’

There were no customers when he said this, and Manager was busy arranging something up on the Red Shelves, and I didn’t want to disturb her by asking permission. So I gave Rosa a glance, and when she looked back blankly, I took two steps forward, crouched down and reached out both hands to the Sun’s pattern on the floor. But as soon as my fingers touched it, the pattern faded, and though I tried all I could – I patted the spot where it had been, and when that didn’t work, rubbed my hands over the floorboards – it wouldn’t come back. When I stood up again Boy AF Rex said:

‘Klara, that was greedy. You girl AFs are always so greedy.’

Even though I was new then, it occurred to me straight away it might not have been my fault; that the Sun had withdrawn his pattern by chance just when I’d been touching it. But Boy AF Rex’s face remained serious.

‘You took all the nourishment for yourself, Klara. Look, it’s gone almost dark.’

Sure enough the light inside the store had become very gloomy. Even outside on the sidewalk, the Tow-Away Zone sign on the lamp post looked gray and faint.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Rex, then turning to Rosa: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it all myself.’

‘Because of you,’ Boy AF Rex said, ‘I’m going to become weak by evening.’

‘You’re making a joke,’ I said to him. ‘I know you are.’

‘I’m not making a joke. I could get sick right now. And what about those AFs rear-store? There’s already something not right with them. They’re bound to get worse now. You were greedy, Klara.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, but I was no longer so sure. I looked at Rosa, but her expression was still blank.

‘I’m feeling sick already,’ Boy AF Rex said. And he sagged forward.

‘But you just said yourself. The Sun always has ways to reach us. You’re making a joke, I know you are.’

I managed in the end to convince myself Boy AF Rex was teasing me. But what I sensed that day was that I had, without meaning to, made Rex bring up something uncomfortable, something most AFs in the store preferred not to talk about. Then not long afterwards that thing happened to Boy AF Rex, which made me think that even if he had been joking that day, a part of him had been serious too.

It was a bright morning, and Rex was no longer beside us because Manager had moved him to the front alcove. Manager always said that every position was carefully conceived, and that we were as likely to be chosen when standing at one as at another. Even so, we all knew the gaze of a customer entering the store would fall first on the front alcove, and Rex was naturally pleased to get his turn there. We watched him from mid-store, standing with his chin raised, the Sun’s pattern all over him, and Rosa leaned over to me once to say, ‘Oh, he does look wonderful! He’s bound to find a home soon!’

On Rex’s third day in the front alcove, a girl came in with her mother. I wasn’t so good then at telling ages, but I remember estimating thirteen and a half for the girl, and I think now that was
correct. The mother was an office worker, and from her shoes and suit we could tell she was high-ranking. The girl went straight to Rex and stood in front of him, while the mother came wandering our way, glanced at us, then went on towards the rear, where two AFs were sitting on the Glass Table, swinging their legs freely as Manager had told them to do. At one point the mother called, but the girl ignored her and went on staring up at Rex’s face. Then the child reached out and ran a hand down Rex’s arm. Rex said nothing, of course, just smiled down at her and remained still, exactly as we’d been told to do when a customer showed special interest.

‘Look!’ Rosa whispered. ‘She’s going to choose him! She loves him. He’s so lucky!’ I nudged Rosa sharply to silence her, because we could easily be heard.

Now it was the girl who called to the mother, and then soon they were both standing in front of Boy AF Rex, looking him up and down, the girl sometimes reaching forward and touching him. The two conferred in soft voices, and I heard the girl say at one point, ‘But he’s perfect, Mom. He’s beautiful.’ Then a moment later, the child said, ‘Oh, but Mom, come on.’

Manager by this time had brought herself quietly behind them. Eventually the mother turned to Manager and asked:

‘Which model is this one?’

‘He’s a B2,’ Manager said. ‘Third series. For the right child, Rex will make a perfect companion. In particular, I feel he’ll encourage a conscientious and studious attitude in a young person.’

‘Well this young lady here could certainly do with that.’

‘Oh, Mother, he’s perfect.’

Then the mother said: ‘B2, third series. The ones with the solar absorption problems, right?’

She said it just like that, in front of Rex, her smile still on her face. Rex kept smiling too, but the child looked baffled and glanced from Rex to her mother.

‘It’s true,’ Manager said, ‘that the third series had a few minor issues at the start. But those reports were greatly exaggerated. In environments with normal levels of light, there’s no problem whatsoever.’

‘I’ve heard solar malabsorption can lead to further problems,’ the mother said. ‘Even behavioral ones.’

‘With respect, ma’am, series three models have brought immense happiness to many children. Unless you live in Alaska or down a mineshaft, you don’t need to worry.’

The mother went on looking at Rex. Then finally she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Caroline. I can see why you like him. But he’s not for us. We’ll find one for you that’s perfect.’

Rex went on smiling until after the customers had left, and even after that, showed no sign of being sad. But that’s when I remembered about him making that joke, and I was sure then that those questions about the Sun, about how much of his nourishment we could have, had been in Rex’s mind for some time.

Today, of course, I realize Rex wouldn’t have been the only one. But officially, it wasn’t an issue at all – every one of us had specifications that guaranteed we couldn’t be affected by factors such as our positioning within a room. Even so, an AF would feel himself growing lethargic after a few hours away from the Sun, and start to worry there was something wrong with him – that he had some fault unique to him and that if it became known, he’d never find a home.

That was one reason why we always thought so much about being in the window. Each of us had been promised our turn, and each of us longed for it to come. That was partly to do with what Manager called the ‘special honor’ of representing the store to the outside. Also, of course, whatever Manager said, we all knew we were more likely to be chosen while in the window. But the big thing, silently understood by us all, was the Sun and his nourishment. Rosa did once bring it up with me, in a whisper, a little while before our turn came around.

‘Klara, do you think once we’re in the window, we’ll receive so much goodness we’ll never get short again?’

I was still quite new then, so didn’t know how to answer, even though the same question had been in my mind.

Then our turn finally came, and Rosa and I stepped into the window one morning, making sure not to knock over any of the display the way the pair before us had done the previous week. The store, of course, had yet to open, and I thought the grid would be fully down. But once we’d seated ourselves on the Striped Sofa, I saw there was a narrow gap running along the bottom of the grid – Manager must have raised it a little when checking everything was ready for us – and the Sun’s light was making a bright rectangle that came up onto the platform and finished in a straight line just in front of us. We only needed to stretch our feet a little to place them within its warmth. I knew then that whatever the answer to Rosa’s question, we were about to get all the nourishment we would need for some time to come. And once Manager touched the switch and the grid climbed up all the way, we became covered in dazzling light.

I should confess here that for me, there’d always been another reason for wanting to be in the window which had nothing to do with the Sun’s nourishment or being chosen. Unlike most AFs, unlike Rosa, I’d always longed to see more of the outside – and to see it in all its detail. So once the grid went up, the realization that there was now only the glass between me and the sidewalk, that I was free to see, close up and whole, so many things I’d seen before only as corners and edges, made me so excited that for a moment I nearly forgot about the Sun and his kindness to us.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf; First Edition (March 2, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 059331817X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593318171
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.39 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.36 x 1.24 x 9.52 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #9,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction (Books)
- #73 in Dystopian Fiction
- #686 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Kazuo Ishiguro

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KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His eight previous works of fiction have earned him many honors around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His work has been translated into over fifty languages, and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both made into acclaimed films, have each sold more than 2 million copies. He was given a knighthood in 2018 for Services to Literature. He also holds the decorations of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan.

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Sherry Sharpnack

Powerful, Poignant Look at the Value of the Human Heart

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 3, 2022

Verified Purchase

In a rather dystopian near-future, Klara is an emotional-support robot, waiting w/ her fellow robots/friends in a store for the perfect youngster to come pick her out. Klara loves to watch the outside through the window, especially the progress of the sun throughout the day. Klara and her fellow robots are solar-powered, so the sun is vital to her functioning as well as her well-being.
One day, a young girl haltingly steps up to the window; she and Klara instantly connect. The girl states that her name is Josie, and asks Klara to wait for her. Josie's mother takes her away, and Manager tells Klara that kids will often intend to return, but for one reason or another, do not; or, even worse, they ignore or mistreat the robots once they have one. Klara should not take this girl's words to heart. While waiting for Josie to return some day, Klara watchs a polluting machine try to hide the sun, yet the sun works hard to overcome the smoke from the machine. Klara also sees the healing effects of the sun on a human relationship and on a man and his dog. Manager is very impressed w/ Klara's observational skills.
Then the unexpected happens! Klara's wait is rewarded! Josie returns to the store, and insists that Mother buy Klara for Josie. Thus Klara's wishes are fulfilled, and she goes home w/ Josie. However, Josie is not well. Klara is to keep an eye on Josie on her ill days, so that Mother can work and the Housekeeper can do her duties. Klara and Josie become closer and closer, until the reader starts to wonder how the relationship will end: will Josie actually die? What is the purpose of all of Josie's "posing sessions" w/ the portraitist? Is there something more sinister going on?
Besides the story, there are many really emotional deeper questions being asked: Is young love real? Even if it doesn't last past the teen years? What if it does? What cost will parents pay to give their child every opportunity at advancement in life? What cost is too high? What actually IS the human heart? Can it be ever be replicated in a machine?
Here are a couple of fabulous quotes along these lines: "Our generation still carry the old feelings. A part of us refuses to let go. The part that wants to keep believing there's something unreachable inside each of us. Something that's unique and won't transfer. But there's nothing like that, we know that now...There's nothing there. Nothing that's inside Josie that's beyond the Klaras of this world to continue." p. 207.
"Then let me ask you something else. Let me ask you this. Do you believe in the human heart? I don't mean simply the organ, obviously. I'm speaking in the poetic sense. The human heart. Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual? And if we just suppose that there is. Then don't you think, in order to truly learn Josie, you'd have to learn not just her mannerisms but what's deeply inside her? Wouldn't you have to learn her heart?" p. 215.
Klara's pleas to the sun for healing; her sacrifice for Josie's health; and the story's poignant ending are all so touching. This book was thoughtful and such a pleasure to read. it was my first Ishiguro, but it won't be my last. 5 enthusiastic stars.

9 people found this helpful

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Luna Saint Claire

What it means to be human

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 24, 2022

Verified Purchase

Kazuo Ishiguro is brilliant for retelling an age-old story that questions what it means to be human. Klara, an artificial friend, is devoted to her ill and possibly dying human companion Josie. Klara, who exists on solar energy, prays to the Sun that she believes is a healing God, though not her creator. And she sacrifices a part of herself, a piece of her brain, to save her human friend. These could be viewed as acts of love and faith. Klara understands that shared love is what makes humans special and individuals.
Ishiguro asks us if love and faith are limited to humans. We know animals love, and so is it possible to create an artificial being capable of love and faith. All of our relationships with other beings, human as well as animal, help define who we are. Klara comes to understand that she is a unique individual, separate from Josie.
Reading Klara and the Sun I couldn’t help being reminded of Pinocchio who wished to be a real boy who could experience love and belonging. Ishiguro posits a moral question about artificial intelligence in the future of our human existence, one that doesn’t exclude faith or love.

7 people found this helpful

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Jilly of the Valley

wonderful, thoughtful read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 11, 2022

Verified Purchase

Klara is an Artificial Friend, an AI, and when we meet her at the beginning of the book she is in a store with others like herself, waiting to be bought as companions for young people in some near future society in a city that is never named. Klara thinks a great deal while she’s waiting and observing life on the street outside. She believes that the Sun is all-powerful as she draws her power from it. One day a young girl called Josie comes to the store window and engages Klara in conversation. When she returns again, Klara begins to hope that perhaps Josie’s family might buy her as a companion for the girl, and that is what happens. But Klara soon learns that Josie is not well and it appears that Josie’s mother may have other plans for Klara. And Klara is not without resources of her own.

I loved this book! I especially loved Klara and her observations. She is so well-drawn, not quite human but not quite Other. Telling the story from her point of view is what makes the book so poignant.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Archy

Sometimes fascinating, sometimes dull

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 9, 2021

Verified Purchase

Tales of androids / robots / Artificial Friends (in this case) showing empathy and perception towards humans are nothing new. Philip K Dick's We can build you, with its Abraham Lincoln simulacra, was half a century back, for example. Being Ishiguru this is dealt with in far more literary prose, but it still plods along in quite a dull fashion much of the time.

Plotwise, the narrator is Klara, an AF (Artificial Friend) to the teenage Josie, who lives an isolated life, aside from neighbour and potential boyfriend Rick, out in the country. She's is suffering from an illness whose cause is not really made specific. In fact in this dystopian future quite a number of things are not quite clear for much of the book. (What, for example, is the pollution spewing Cooting Machine?) Anyway, Klara's job is to observe and learn about Klara, and this she does, though her observations do become rather tiresome after a while. And I'm afraid the huge error she makes in regard to the Sun is simply, for me, not believable for one so otherwise intelligent. And the anti-climatic ending, while poignant, I found unsatisfying.

I kept going with this because it was Kazuo Ishiguru and does contain some fine passages, but it was a bit disappointing really.

99 people found this helpful

Marcus

Emotionally gripping and thoughtful -- a masterpiece

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 27, 2021

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All of Ishiguro's novels are compelling and emotional, but for some of them the prevalent emotion is frustration or exasperation. Klara and the Sun is a return to Ishiguro's old form -- a book more like The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go.

Reading Klara and the Sun is a troubling experience. The emotional content is strong, while the world seems different from ours but disturbingly familiar. When I finished the book, I was left emotionally drained and it took me a few days to slowly arrange the book's ideas in my head. I really recommend this book.

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Klara and the Sun is set in the very near future, in a world that is clearly derived from ours. Technology is a bit more advanced, and inequality is even more pronounced. The novel is not conspicuously political, and the action of the novel is largely set in a distant out-of-town location where social reality barely intrudes. Yet there are half-hidden undertones of a disturbing political reality. Fascism is on the rise; big business continues to pollute the environment; society is divided between an elite class who can afford 'uplifting' for their children, though the process is risky, and an underclass who are effectively barred from higher education and decent jobs; most of society is 'post-employed'. It reminds me of how the social realities behind Jane Austen's novels -- slavery, the French Revolution, the oppression of women -- appear to be ignored in her vision of bucolic tranquillity but actually motivate her novels at a deeper level.

Klara herself is an AF, an 'artificial friend'. Klara has been designed to have a deep intuitive understanding of relationships and a real empathy for the humans she is supposed to befriend. However, Ishiguro goes to some lengths to show that these are really Klara's only skills. She has very little understanding of how the world works. Her mobility is limited and she has no senses of taste or smell. She can visually perceive simple scenes, but when there are too many people, or the setting is new to her, the scene breaks up into boxes that are barely connected. Sometimes she relates objects visually to views from her memory that are irrelevant: a line of coffee cups in the shop with a line of objects in the barn. Patterns of sunlight from a window which a human would ignore, have significance for Klara. Klara's world is different from and much simpler than ours.

Klara's simplicity, and her own dependence on solar power, leads her to a home-made religion of sun worship. Ishiguro's skill as an author makes it very believable that Klara's strong sense of empathy with human beings combined with her lack of knowledge of the real world leads her to the intuitive sense that the sun has human feelings and super-human capabilities.

Klara goes on to potentially sacrifice herself to persuade the sun to cure her human, Josie, from a disease that we eventually find is related to the process of 'uplift' that is to give her a chance of a career in this dystopian society. Klara believes that her sacrifice is what saved Josie. If true, it means that Klara has denied herself the role of 'continuing' Josie, by acting as her -- something that could have won Klara the love of 'the mother' and Ricky, 'the boyfriend'. It is very reminiscent of the butler in The Remains of the Day, who sacrificed his chance of love for a cause that proved to be pointless.

Klara ends up in a scrapyard, only able to move her head around so she can see the sky, and to slowly put her memories in order. It is a heart-breaking end to a story where she has given everything and received nothing in return, but where Klara has no bitterness at all because that ability was not programmed into her.

On one level, this is a story about artificial intelligence and an ethical side that has so far almost been ignored -- if we create beings that are capable of love and empathy, we should then be responsible for how we treat them. Mary Shelley understood this problem when she wrote Frankenstein, but most of the discussion of the ethics of AI today focusses only on the effect on humans.

On another level, this is a story about us now -- about how we use other people and are used by them. Klara and the Sun rings true emotionally because it is talking about exploitative relationships of a kind that we have seen, maybe experienced, ourselves. The political and social backdrop of the novel, so like present-day America where social inequality and individuality is taken to extremes, mirrors the way Klara is exploited. Klara's sacrifice and prayer to a non-existent sun-god likewise show humanity's response to that inequality and soullessness, in religion and sacrifice.

Klara's naivety and intuition lead her to a sacrifice that may be pointless, but show her to be the only real human in the book.

79 people found this helpful

M.H.

An okay read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 16, 2021

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I am glad that I read this novel, although I am really not sure what the hype was about. It was okay. I enjoyed the first part of the book and the perspective of Klara (a robot) relaying her sights and impressions of life outside the shop window of a busy high street store. I couldn't emotionally connect to any of the characters and found them lifeless, empty and superficial. This could be intentional, and reflecting the narrative viewpoint of the robot (i.e. the limited ability of a robot to fully connect with humans), but I felt this world, and its inhabitants were flat, devoid of real emotions, so that I was fully detached by the end. I wasn't challenged by the themes, and if I was a 13 year old once more, I may have felt the same way. With saying that, it has now been several days since I have finished the novel and my mind does keep returning to it. I cannot think about the sun in the same way, so I guess it has made an impression on me. I just wanted a bit more: realism, detail, explanation of the dystopian world it was set in; character depth, more explicit moral discussion. I feel somewhat empty. I honestly feel gutted not to love this book like some other readers have done.

77 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Stunning

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 2, 2021

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As expected, a profound and beautiful work from one of my favourite authors.I don't think you can read anything of his without feeling changed even in some small way. I can't really do it justice with a long and rambling review and I generally think it's best to go into novels like this without a detailed plot outline. Discover it for yourself, you'll be glad you did.

70 people found this helpful

SLJ

Beautiful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 5, 2021

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This is the most beautiful book. I finished it just moments ago and, though I rarely usually bother to review things, felt I had to write about the beauty in these pages. Smart, moving and wise, I didn’t know until I reached the final page just how in love with it I had fallen. Or how little I wanted to leave Klara and the world here created by closing the cover.

If this doesn’t win awards and make it onto all of the best of the year lists I will be astonished.

56 people found this helpful

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