- I've read most of Nobel prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro's novels and was very enthusiastic about his last one, published in 2015, The Buried Giant. He has a very light and steady touch, his narratives sliding almost unnoticed into meaningful social critiques.
- Initially I was captivated by Klara and The Sun, as it was clear the same dynamic was at play. The story progressed slowly, teasingly, seemingly gaining real power. But unfortunately it turned out to be both remarkable and unremarkable. It's both suggestive of insight, depth and meaning, yet disappointingly fails to deliver in the end. It lacks the king hit.
- We're introduced to a society where robots (Artificial Friends or AFs) are purchased by parents for their children, much like pets. They are highly engineered and have intelligence, emotions and insight. The Sun (always with a capital S) is the source of their energy and 'life'.
- Klara, the AF bought by the Mother for her daughter Josie, is very kind, generous, altruistic and loyal. She understands life giving and life extinguishing forces (the Sun, always with a capital S, and pollution). She gets these basics but not at all the minutiae.
- Josie is ailing and we're never told why. Her Mother (always with a capital M), divorced from her father, is a ‘high-up’ in this stratified society and frequently cold and hard to read. In fact she's a quite unlikable and manipulative person. She works each day so reluctantly buys Klara to keep her daughter company. Josie's childhood friend Rick and his mother are neighbours but are not as ‘high-rank’ as Josie and her Mother. Parents in Rick's strata desire their children to be ‘lifted’. Those that haven’t benefited form this method of ‘generic editing’ (we are not told the process) are denied access to the best schools and universities. There are hints of fascism here.
- The novel is full of all sorts of interesting details and cheeky observations. Melania Housekeeper for example is employed for domestic duties in Josie's house and has a foreign accent (just of course like Melania Trump!)
- An ‘oblong’ is presumably a computer, and is a learning device for Josie and Rick who are schooled at home.
- Lots of questions remain unanswered: What is the robot made of? What is Josie’s illness? What year is it? Why does she address people in the third person? We're told she can't smell but we have to presume she doesn’t drink or eat. All this makes the narrative intriguing but in the end frustrating.
- Klara learns as she goes. She registers for example that the individual and group dynamics of humans are complicated and unpredictable.
- For some silly and unexplained reason she becomes determined to destroy the 'Cootings Machine' in the city, presumably a building site generator, because it pollutes, and she's convinced its destruction will save Josie from her life-threatening illness. She's naive in the extreme. She's also silly about the nourishment Josie would get from exposure to the Sun. The so-called adults in the room never stoop to help her, inform her, or teach her.
- Ishiguro's point seems to be that the social dynamics of adult humans are complicated, difficult and mysterious, and not open to full understanding. He doesn't show much sympathy for them. His novels often pit the young against the old and this one is no exception.
- In so many ways the real adults in this story are the two teenagers, Josie and Rick. Closely followed by the robot.
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