c0wcow 's review for:

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

4.0

reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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 The book is very centered around the characters and from the casual dialogues that the MC listens to and observes. From these sources you slowly get a better understanding of the type of futuristic, very classist world they live in and the choices these people have to make to keep up with society causing ethical concerns. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Chronic illness, Grief

Minor: Classism

The pacing of the book can be like a whip lash for people as it is very slow essentially going day by day of the life of a robot being sold to a family and then living with the family. I like the beginning of the book because while its about the robot MC, Klara, being sold I can relate to it because in retail jobs like in a mall, a decent amount of time your just waiting. While waiting obviously the next thing you can do is talk to your co workers but in the little times where your alone your eyes can wander looking at your surroundings or passersby imagining little things about them almost exactly like how Klara does but with more human context obviously. Going back to the main topic, for quiet literally 90% of the book the pacing seems good, there are brief timeskips of weeks or months but the very last time skip after Josie overcomes her illness everyones relationship changes in the span of a few years for what seems no reason at all. As frustating as it is that might seem that might be the whole idea of the book. From the very beginning when Klara gets sold off to Josie's family while there was genuine affection from Josie's end, overall, the relationships we see are almost always transactional. Take for example Ricky, Ricky is Josie's neighbor and from what we see initially her best friend, they hang out almost all the time and he takes care of her in some of her bad episodes and his main goal is to go to the same college with her.