Review by orionmerlin - Klara and the Sun

orionmerlin 's review for:

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

3.0

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Characters: 6/10

Klara is undeniably memorable, but more as a concept than a character with real growth. Her polite, literal-minded optimism is sweet—until it starts to calcify into flat predictability. She doesn’t evolve so much as repeat variations on “I will help Josie” in increasingly earnest tones. Josie herself walks the line between sympathetic and annoying, and while her illness adds stakes, her personality rarely deepens beyond “fragile girl with a sharp tongue.” Chrissie had potential as a complex mother figure torn apart by guilt and control, but the novel undercuts her development by rushing through her moral crisis. Everyone else? Pretty archetypal. Melania Housekeeper exists to snarl and occasionally tug at your heartstrings, while Rick’s entire personality is “boy-next-door but sad.” A lot of emotional potential here, but only partially realized.

Atmosphere / Setting: 7/10

Ishiguro’s world is eerie in its subtlety—a dystopia that whispers rather than screams. The rural isolation, the sterile urban visits, the almost mythic presence of the Sun... it’s a vibe. But that’s mostly what it is: vibes over clarity. The details of “lifting” and the societal collapse around it are intentionally vague, which gives the novel an air of mystery but also left me craving more context. I did feel immersed in Klara’s limited view—watching the world unfold from behind glass and filtered through solar reverence—but that constraint sometimes stunted the emotional impact. Still, the settings serve the tone well: quiet, off-kilter, and just a little too clean.

Writing Style: 8/10

This is where the book felt strongest. Ishiguro’s prose is elegant in that “makes you pause mid-sentence to feel sad about the sun” kind of way. Klara’s voice—clinical but strangely poetic—is consistent and occasionally quite beautiful. Her simplicity isn’t dumbed-down; it’s precise, filtered, and subtly lyrical. I admired how much emotional weight Ishiguro squeezed from so few words. That said, the detachment did wear thin sometimes. When the stakes were highest, I wanted more intensity, but the narration remained locked in soft-spoken observation mode. Still, it’s a compelling and unique voice, and it carried me further than the plot probably deserved.

Plot: 4.5/10

Whew. This is where things get wobbly. Klara and the Sun is less a story and more a collection of moments drifting toward a quiet emotional implosion. There’s a robot sabotage mission. A would-be AI resurrection scheme. A near-death experience. A pseudo-religious quest. And somehow... none of it lands with force. The big “reveal” about Chrissie’s plan to turn Klara into Josie 2.0 should’ve rocked the story—it barely ripples. The Morgan Falls scene wants to be pivotal, but ends up murky and anticlimactic. And by the time Klara ends up immobile in a junkyard, I wasn’t even shocked. I was just disappointed we’d taken such a long, meandering road to get there.

Intrigue: 6.5/10

I stayed engaged, but not because the plot pulled me along—it was Klara’s perspective that did the work. I wanted to see how she would make sense of the humans around her, what she’d misunderstand next, and how her loyalty would be tested. The mystery of the Sun, her strange acts of devotion, and the mounting tension around Josie’s illness kept me curious. But it was a quiet, low-boil kind of curiosity, not edge-of-my-seat intensity. The novel flirts with big questions, but rarely commits to exploring them deeply. So I was interested—but not exactly captivated.

Logic / Relationships: 5.5/10

Ishiguro leans into ambiguity, and sometimes that worked for me—but other times, it felt like narrative sleight of hand. Klara’s belief that the Sun is a god who healed Josie toes the line between moving and absurd. Her actions follow an internal logic, but the world around her often doesn’t. Chrissie’s ethical nosedive into cloning territory is treated almost too delicately—where was the reckoning? The relationships are believable in theory (grieving mother, codependent neighbors, lonely kids), but they lacked the depth to feel fully grounded. I didn’t always buy the connections, even when I understood them conceptually.

Enjoyment: 6/10

This book gave me more to think about than to feel. I respected the craft. I was intrigued by the weird mix of sci-fi and spirituality. But emotionally? It left me cold. Klara’s quiet tragedy should’ve hit harder than it did. By the time she’s sitting motionless in a junkyard, forgotten and abandoned, I felt more resigned than heartbroken. There were beautiful moments, sure. And a few haunting images that stuck with me. But overall, the book felt like an art installation: lovely, abstract, and a little too detached to leave me truly moved.

OVERALL: 6.2/10

Klara and the Sun is thoughtful, elegant, and quietly strange—but it’s also emotionally distant and narratively thin. It’s a book I admired more than I enjoyed. Klara deserved a more compelling story, and honestly? So did I.

Content Warnings