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asianamlitfansWritten by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Wow! What a novel! I’m reviewing Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (Knopf 2021), which is, in my estimation, one of Ishiguro’s best, right up there with A Pale View of Hills and The Remains of the Day.
The official marketing description is pithy, but here it is: “Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro does not disappoint with this latest novel set in a technologically advanced society that feels not dissimilar from our own. We see and understand the world through Klara, an advanced and keenly observant Artificial Friend whose sole purpose is to help the child who owns her. Hopeful and haunting at the same time, Klara’s story leads to big questions: What qualities make a person unique? How do we value people and things in our society? What does it mean to love?” The story is told from the first person perspective of Klara, who is a slightly less advanced model of the Artificial Friend, which is abbreviated as an AF in the fictional world. The story is told from a retrospective positionality, though it is not clear from what point Klara is narrating until the conclusion.
The novel opens with Klara reminiscing about her time in a store where AFs are sold. Klara is one of a number of different AFs that are on constant display, at various locations within the store. Klara will occasionally get the chance to be positioned at the store’s front window, which gives her the best chance to be bought by a customer. In this fictional world, children are often given AFs as companions. In one of Klara’s turns at the front of the store, she interacts with someone outside named Josie. Josie promises to return, which Klara tries to honor. While other customers come and go, with one even attempting to purchase Klara, Klara still finds a way to remain unbought, even at the consternation of the Manager, who reminds Klara that children make promises all the time. But Klara is actually right. Josie returns, and Klara is bought by Josie’s family. Klara then tells us about how she acculturates to living with Josie and her family. She has to deal with the Housekeeper, and the Mother (aka Josie’s mother), as well as Josie’s tortured friendship with a local boy named Rick. In this process, we begin to discover that this fictional world is one separated primarily by class, with some children being marked as “lifted,” while the others are considered to be of a lower class. The term “lifted” is not entirely explained until further on in the text—and I will provide a spoiler warning here, so you can look away if you need to—but part of the reason why we never find out immediately is because everything is filtered through Klara’s understanding and perspective. Ultimately though, children who are lifted have undergone some sort of genetic engineering. There is a potential cost to being lifted because some of these children end up with illnesses, as a result of gene editing. Both Josie and Josie’s older sister Sal are lifted, but both also have serious side effects of the process. Sal ends up dying, while Josie has a serious chronic illness that may also take her life, though the text doesn’t ever clarify what Josie’s (or Sal’s) maladies might be. Thus, Klara’s presence in the household is not simply to be Josie’s friend but also to be a kind of caretaker.
Indeed, Klara, as she watches Josie experiences bouts of her sickness, tries to make an appeal to the Sun—yes, the Sun in the sky—who Klara believes has the power to restore Josie. In this way, Ishiguro is supremely masterful in locating the idiosyncrasies in the logic of an artificial intelligent mind. Klara, who is solar-powered, believes that the Sun truly does have miraculous abilities, which may extend to Josie. While the premise of the novel is direct enough, Ishiguro has some real twists and surprises in store. And of course, what Ishiguro is always best at is describing the complicated ways in which we love and desire each other, as family members, as romantic objects, as well as exploring the dynamic between the robot and the human. The concluding sequence is particularly affecting, as Ishiguro gives us pause in thinking about how we treat objects that we assume do not have feelings and do not have sentience. The book has much in line with Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, but for me, of the two, Klara and the Sun is superior. I believe my response to it is, in part, to the absolutely intricate way in which Ishiguro inhabits the mind of an artificial intelligence, which colors how the entire story is narrated and understood.
Buy the Book Here
Edited by Corinna Cape
Wow! What a novel! I’m reviewing Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (Knopf 2021), which is, in my estimation, one of Ishiguro’s best, right up there with A Pale View of Hills and The Remains of the Day.
The official marketing description is pithy, but here it is: “Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro does not disappoint with this latest novel set in a technologically advanced society that feels not dissimilar from our own. We see and understand the world through Klara, an advanced and keenly observant Artificial Friend whose sole purpose is to help the child who owns her. Hopeful and haunting at the same time, Klara’s story leads to big questions: What qualities make a person unique? How do we value people and things in our society? What does it mean to love?” The story is told from the first person perspective of Klara, who is a slightly less advanced model of the Artificial Friend, which is abbreviated as an AF in the fictional world. The story is told from a retrospective positionality, though it is not clear from what point Klara is narrating until the conclusion.
The novel opens with Klara reminiscing about her time in a store where AFs are sold. Klara is one of a number of different AFs that are on constant display, at various locations within the store. Klara will occasionally get the chance to be positioned at the store’s front window, which gives her the best chance to be bought by a customer. In this fictional world, children are often given AFs as companions. In one of Klara’s turns at the front of the store, she interacts with someone outside named Josie. Josie promises to return, which Klara tries to honor. While other customers come and go, with one even attempting to purchase Klara, Klara still finds a way to remain unbought, even at the consternation of the Manager, who reminds Klara that children make promises all the time. But Klara is actually right. Josie returns, and Klara is bought by Josie’s family. Klara then tells us about how she acculturates to living with Josie and her family. She has to deal with the Housekeeper, and the Mother (aka Josie’s mother), as well as Josie’s tortured friendship with a local boy named Rick. In this process, we begin to discover that this fictional world is one separated primarily by class, with some children being marked as “lifted,” while the others are considered to be of a lower class. The term “lifted” is not entirely explained until further on in the text—and I will provide a spoiler warning here, so you can look away if you need to—but part of the reason why we never find out immediately is because everything is filtered through Klara’s understanding and perspective. Ultimately though, children who are lifted have undergone some sort of genetic engineering. There is a potential cost to being lifted because some of these children end up with illnesses, as a result of gene editing. Both Josie and Josie’s older sister Sal are lifted, but both also have serious side effects of the process. Sal ends up dying, while Josie has a serious chronic illness that may also take her life, though the text doesn’t ever clarify what Josie’s (or Sal’s) maladies might be. Thus, Klara’s presence in the household is not simply to be Josie’s friend but also to be a kind of caretaker.
Indeed, Klara, as she watches Josie experiences bouts of her sickness, tries to make an appeal to the Sun—yes, the Sun in the sky—who Klara believes has the power to restore Josie. In this way, Ishiguro is supremely masterful in locating the idiosyncrasies in the logic of an artificial intelligent mind. Klara, who is solar-powered, believes that the Sun truly does have miraculous abilities, which may extend to Josie. While the premise of the novel is direct enough, Ishiguro has some real twists and surprises in store. And of course, what Ishiguro is always best at is describing the complicated ways in which we love and desire each other, as family members, as romantic objects, as well as exploring the dynamic between the robot and the human. The concluding sequence is particularly affecting, as Ishiguro gives us pause in thinking about how we treat objects that we assume do not have feelings and do not have sentience. The book has much in line with Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, but for me, of the two, Klara and the Sun is superior. I believe my response to it is, in part, to the absolutely intricate way in which Ishiguro inhabits the mind of an artificial intelligence, which colors how the entire story is narrated and understood.
Buy the Book Here
