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orangepoem 's review for:
Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Klara and the Sun moves at a slow pace through an undetermined future society in the US where families can buy their children Artificial Friends, or AFs. The story is told through the quietly observant tones of Klara, an AF who has advanced observational abilities and is adopted by a child named Josie.
The story touches upon a few major themes, but only delves into each one insofar as Klara can comprehend them: Class consciousness, economic disparity and privilege, artificial intelligence, the blurred line between robot and human capabilities and legitimacy of personhood, environmentalism. My personal wish is that Klara had been able to follow the thread of any one of these themes to its narrative conclusion, but our time in the world only exists as far as an Artificial Friend can describe it.
I didn’t feel particularly moved by this book and was surprised by the relatively banal ending.The reveal that Josie’s “portrait” is actually a project between her mother and the puppetmaker to create an AF version of Josie using Klara’s body and a new skin, or the moment when Klara donates her brain fluid to stop the Cootings machine, are both moments that I thought would bring us to a science-fiction-horror crescendo in the story. In fact, neither of these pivotal moments come to any sort of narrative fruition. Josie gets better and doesn’t need to be immortalized as an AF, puppetmaker isn’t even outed as a pedophile, and Klara’s mechanical sacrifice doesn’t seem to have extended effects on her perceptual ability. IMO a sudden narrative tone shift following what should have been a big technical downgrade could have made the impact of Klara’s sacrifice so much richer. However the writing style is descriptive and interesting, allowing us to see the world through an AF’s eyes.
My one gripe is the book’s insistence on naming black people “black skinned” and then not identifying the skin colour of anyone else.
The story touches upon a few major themes, but only delves into each one insofar as Klara can comprehend them: Class consciousness, economic disparity and privilege, artificial intelligence, the blurred line between robot and human capabilities and legitimacy of personhood, environmentalism. My personal wish is that Klara had been able to follow the thread of any one of these themes to its narrative conclusion, but our time in the world only exists as far as an Artificial Friend can describe it.
I didn’t feel particularly moved by this book and was surprised by the relatively banal ending.
My one gripe is the book’s insistence on naming black people “black skinned” and then not identifying the skin colour of anyone else.