Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Amy  

science fiction

Klara is an Artificial Friend, a robot that wealthy parents can purchase to keep their children company.  Klara is not the newest model available but an ill girl named Josie selects Klara to be her AF. The world they inhabit also includes artificial “lifting” that somehow gives some children an edge over those who can’t afford to be lifted.

Klara and the Sun is told from Klara’s point of view beginning with her wait to be purchased from the store and ending when Josie is no longer in need of her. Kazuo Ishiguro does a great job describing how a teachable artificial intelligence might view the world, although the book was fairly long-winded and slow-paced. 

The story loosely covers Josie’s illness, her family and friends, and their environment—only as much as an AI might be concerned with it.  While Klara is intuitive, she does not know or understand everything.  The more in-depth story is Klara’s own—her observations, decisions, and actions—within the framework of her residence with Josie’s family.

Because of this, some aspects of the story were lacking details which was frustrating at times. Also, Klara frequently described having a fragmented viewpoint which I can only assume is meant to explain how she took in conflicting observations, opinions, and feelings that Klara was picking up on during some tense situations.  I think she was trying to interpret different complexities of human interaction. But these sections of the story confused me more than anything else and interrupted what little flow there was. 

I’ll look forward to discussing this in book club. I definitely didn’t love this book although I liked it better than the other book of Ishiguro’s I read, Never Let Me Go.  I’m wavering between 2-1/2 and 3 stars.  I think that means I need to go with 2-1/2.

For once, I cannot fault an audiobook narrator for being too robotic. Sura Siu was narrating a robot’s point of view, after all.  Thankfully, she was just the right amount of robotic. My only real complaint is that her British accent wasn’t amazing and much of this novel includes dialogue with two British people. Therefore, I wouldn't have cast her for this role. She did have a small vocal repertoire. I’ll give her a B+.