Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun is a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, who previously won a Nobel Prize in Literature. Klara and the Sun is set in near-future America, and the story, interestingly, is narrated by Klara, an Artificial Friend (AR) that elites buy for their children. The story is generally a class story because elite children are also ‘lifted’ or genetically enhanced for academic performance and excellence, which, to some children, causes sickness and death. That is the case for Josie, who chooses Klara as her AF.
Klara, as an AF, has observational capacities and narrates a story of life on earth and her perceptions. Her observational capacities are limited but still perceptive, and she explores loneliness, love, social inequality, and the ethics of AF. This was very interesting to read because, on one hand, her story and stuff she says play into the reader’s empathy, but Klara narrates stuff factually. So, she, in some ways, learn and was trained to recognise issues humanity faces and how humanity deals with issues, but as the book progresses, we see there is no empathy obviously. So, there is this weird sense of a reader almost feeling empathy towards Klara and having to remind themselves that Klara, in fact, does not feel; she just observes.
Before Klara gets selected by Josie, she tells a story of waiting in a store to be purchased. She observes human behaviour with curiosity, particularly regarding the Sun because Klara is solar powered and believes in the ‘Sun’s special nourishment’, but she does not always understand that the Sun cannot heal and power humans in the same way it does for her. Klara then goes to Josie’s household and meets her mom and the housekeeper (all housekeepers are immigrants brought to the country to serve; another class element, but also an element of the immigration debate as we know it today, where immigration is often debated functionally and what immigrants bring to the country in monetary and social terms).
Most of the novel deals with what it means to love someone and whether love can be engineered. The novel highlights AI and personhood and the morality of creating beings designed to serve, inequality in education, where children can be genetically ‘lifted’ so some are left out because of deep class divides and a lack of meritocracy, enforcing privilege. Also, the novel deals with love, care, and substitution, and whether love can be replicated or outsourced because Klara becomes entangled in the family’s hopes and fears around Josie’s health, and the reader questions whether care performed by AI can be genuine, but also whether humans always see humanity in one another. What is more, at the end of the book, there are two poignant moments when Klara ends up in the utility room where she goes of her own will since Josie is growing up, but the way she describes this makes the reader realise that the empathy they feel about AF that ended up in the utility room (which was explored at the beginning of the book), is actually meaningless because Klara only describes that, but does not expresses feelings she simply does not have. Equally, after the utility room, and towards the end of Klara’s life, her former store manager tries to show her empathy and address perceived loneliness, which Klara declines, proving once again she has no feelings and humans should not really get attached to AI. A very interesting ending with lots of food for thought, but ultimately based on Klara’s attempts to sacrifice for Josie throughout the book, one has to ask whether humans are better for humans, or maybe sometimes it is AI, at least in this case, when the AI is programmed to support humans.
The novel is written in a beautiful, understated writing style and from a character’s point of view. It has a unique AI narrator who shows naivety but also insights. Some readers might see the book as slow because one would expect a dynamic dystopian narrative, but this does not take anything away from the book. I enjoyed it despite its slow pace because of the questions it raises, and Klara’s emotional distance whilst trying to talk about human stuff like empathy, love, and care, which gave me a lot of food for thought.
The only criticism I have is that class inequality is suggested rather than explored in detail, particularly the fact Josie’s father lives in one unprivileged community which seems to be facing a divide so he is considered a fascist because he lives with people of the same origin and he defends himself by citing security, which suggests a class but also a deep racial divide in the book’s setting, which I would have love to read more about. Because indeed, whilst this story is dystopian, I am not sure that we are far away from this story becoming a reality, and elites having access to advanced AI assistants such as AF, whilst working classes might end up racially divided and living in communities that guard against each other.
I read this book as part of one of my book clubs, and we loved this author and Klara and the Sun so much that the next book we are reading is also from the same author, Never Let Me Go.
Thank you for reading!