Name: Fred Rivett's review of Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Item: Klara and the Sun
Rating: 3.5
Author: Fred Rivett

Kazuo Ishiguro

Sunday Times Number One Bestseller

Klara and the Sun

"From her place in the store that sells artificial friends, Klara--an artificial friend with outstanding observational qualities--watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara she is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In this luminous tale, Klara and the Sun, Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?"--

gitsa

It must be great. Not to miss things. Not to long to get back to something. Not to be looking back all the time.

Fabrice Schäfer Rodrigues

Sometimes, she said, 'at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness. I'm glad you watch everything so carefully, Klara.

Carrie Booth

She was quiet for another moment. "Yes," she said, eventually. "That must be it. They lost each other. And perhaps just now, just by chance, they found each other again."

jenny grace

“Perhaps they hadn’t met for a long time. A long, long time. Perhaps when they last held each other like that, they were still young.’

‘Do you mean, Manager, that they lost each other?’

She was quiet for another moment. ‘Yes,’ she said, eventually. ‘That must be it. They lost each other. And perhaps just now, just by chance, they found each other again.”

“Those people seem so pleased to see each other,’ Manager said. And I realized she’d been watching them as closely as I had.

‘Yes, they seem so happy,’ I said. ‘But it’s strange because they also seem upset.’

‘Oh, Klara,’ Manager said quietly. ‘You never miss a thing, do you?”

“They fought as though the most important thing was to damage each other as much as possible. Their faces were twisted into horrible shapes, so that someone new might not even have realized they were people at all, and all the time they were punching each other, they shouted out cruel words.”

“she was, in her own way, excited and observant, and as anxious as I was to prepare herself to be as kind and helpful an AF as possible. But the more I watched, the more I wanted to learn, and unlike Rosa, I became puzzled, then increasingly fascinated by the more mysterious emotions passers-by would display in front of us.”

“I noticed such things all the time, but said nothing”

“What you must understand is that we’re a very special store. There are many children out there who would love to be able to choose you, choose Rosa, any one of you here. But it’s not possible for them. You’re beyond their reach. That’s why they come to the window, to dream about having you. But then they get sad.’

‘Manager, a child like that. Would a child like that have an AF at home?’

‘Perhaps not. Certainly not one like you. So if sometimes a child looks at you in an odd way, with bitterness or sadness, says something unpleasant through the glass, don’t think anything of it. Just remember. A child like that is most likely frustrated.”

“A child like that, with no AF, would surely be lonely.’

‘Yes, that too,’ Manager said quietly. ‘Lonely. Yes.”

Fred Rivett

“Perhaps,” I said eventually, “the Mother thought if she stayed with Josie all the time, Josie would be less lonely.”

“If that were true, if Josie really would be less lonely with the Mother, then I'd happily go away.”

“But who says I'm lonely? I'm not lonely.”

“Perhaps all humans are lonely. At least potentially."

I had seen photos of bulls in magazines, but of course never in reality, and even though this one was standing quite far from us, and I knew it couldn't cross the fence, I was so alarmed by its appearance I gave an exclamation and came to a halt. I'd never before seen anything that gave, all at once, so many signals of anger and the wish to destroy. Its face, its horns, its cold eyes watching me all brought fear into my mind, but I felt something more, something stranger and deeper. At that moment it felt to me some great error had been made that the creature should be allowed to stand in the Sun's pattern at all, that this bull belonged somewhere deep in the ground far within the mud and darkness, and its presence on the grass could only have awful consequences.

The kitchen was an excellent room for the Sun to look into.

Francine

The Sun had ways of reaching us wherever we were.

AVAILABLE TO PREORDER NOW 'The Sun always has ways to reach us.' From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly-changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

sina (she/her) 

"I supported you this time. But I won't do it again. Its for the customer to choose the AF, never the other way round." 

Danny White

Favoritism, like any other form of corruption, works best when it remains unacknowledged.

The new B3s, it was said, had all sorts of improvements. But how could they be good AFs for their children if their minds could invent ideas like these?

Brodie smith

Of course a human heart is bound to be complex, it must be limited.

“Sometimes,” she said, “ at special moments like that, people feel pain alongside their happiness.”

Klara and the Sun is the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2017

Klara Hansen 

A very timely story to read with the surge of AI in present day. At times it was hard to fully understand what was going on, but that very much felt by design. I found myself feeling genuinely sad for Klara at times; full well knowing that at the end of the day, she was just an Artificial Friend. 

Elyse Anderson

The ending did it for me. Beautiful writing, and can’t wait to see the film. 

Ani Velasquez

when i made it to part four i felt the book was so dragged on; it made me drop the book. but i feel like it was the right place that i stopped reading, because i was met with overwhelming and melancholic segments that finally made me finish this book, all in one sitting.

darryl ✦

The beginning one-third was a slow burn, but the rest sits with you for a good while.

cha ☁️

klara's perspective is so pure and observant, it makes you rethink what it means to be human. the way she sees the sun, not just as energy but as something sacred, it’s both beautiful and unsettling. Ishiguro doesn’t just tell a story; he makes you sit with questions about love, sacrifice, and the limits of technology. it’s slow in parts, but that slowness forces you to really feel the weight of it all.

Simple language but boy did it engage. I had difficulty putting it down. Seemingly straightforward story but I’m sure I’ll be mulling over some aspects of it for a long time to come. Definitely one of the greats of our time.

This book is the one I read after a rather long reading slump. What I like about this book is how it lets us view the world and humanity from the perspective of an artificial friend—slash robot—as well as showing just how complex human emotions really are. However, in terms of plot, there are probably many other books out there that are more compelling. I would never say this book is bad because I quite enjoy Kazuo Ishiguro's writing style and language, even if the story moves at a slower pace.

Jess Z

Slow and tenderly written book. Really enjoyed the pace and care fullness. 

antonia maria wagner she/they

Loved Kiara’s relationship with the Sun. Liked the fragmented vision. Ishiguro is YA for older folks.

Eli Alvah Huckabee

I don't know if I didn't get this book/read it in too many fragments but I didn't really like it oops 

maddy rowley

A fresh perspective of seeing the nature of human connection and love. Love the emotional intensity from part two until the end.

Yves

Was very excited for this as a fan of Ishiguro’s other work - just feels quite slight compared to his other stuff? Has all the elegance but none of the emotional heft of that work. Maybe I just didn’t get it but it felt like there was something big missing - although I thought this was a breezy and pleasant read.

Tom Lawlor

Eva Ströberg

At first I thought this book reminds me a lot of Ian McEwan's Machine Like me, with the android theme, but not so much sci-fi, but I quickly forgot about the other book as I went deeper into the book, because there's so much more in Klara & The Sun compared to the other, proving how masterful Ishiguro is with words, character feelings and the way they make you feel, just like he did with "The Remains of the Day"

Klara, which is an AF (artificial friend, I suppose? There was never any explanation), is the main character in the book. All in the book is from her perspective, so it can be confusing sometimes, because she doesn't always call things by their actual name, but she observes a lot, and she is learning every day how to function in the human world, after she was brought home from a store to accompany a sickly teenager named Josie.

I would not delve further into the book, but this is another brilliant work from Ishiguro and how we perceive humanity (?)

Anna 

nikdy jsem si nemyslela že něco takovýho řeknu, ale myslím si, že tahle kniha bude lepší jako film. myslím, že jsem z popisu v knize ne všechno pochopila, občas asi i nějaký důležitý momenty.
 byl to hořkosladký zážitek a já si z knihy vzala hlavně to zmatení, které se ke konci každou stránku zdvojnásobovalo. 
a po přečtení dalších recenzí nejsem (pro jednou) sama, takže v knize asi opravdu chybí vysvětlení důležitých faktorů, které v knize hrají hlavní roli, ale vlastně se neví proč. ten svět byl sotva nějak vystavěný. chybělo mi vysvětlení toho, jak funguje školský systém a toho, co vlastně josie je... 

těším se na film taiky, snad do příběhu přinese tu správnou vizuální stránku, která mi v knize po dlouhé době chyběla. a snad pochopím, co se tam vlastně dělo.

Tamara

I guess I’m the opposite of the other reviewers: I didn’t love Never Let Me Go but I did thoroughly enjoy this one.

Gelaine Trinidad

4.5/5 

Our society is at a crossroads especially with the rise of artificial intelligence and gene editing (i.e. CRISPR). Kazuo Ishiguro lays these concepts in the background of his novel which centres around an outside narrator named Klara—a robot created to help children cope with loneliness—as she begins to understand human emotions, relationships, and the world around her. Klara is a very observant and intuitive AI. Like a child, she is curious of the outside world and longs to make further sense of it. Klara learns about human love and relationships throughout the novel and is receptive to the various ways humans demonstrate their love for one another. Without spoiling anything, I just want to say that this book lies in-between genres. Maybe it cannot be categorized solely as sci-fi but literary fiction as well. There is some world building but some things are left for the readers to answer themselves and put the pieces together. It is subtle and ambiguous.

It is set in a futuristic world where the possibility of gene-editing and robots are real. Readers also get a sense of something sinister awaiting Klara (hinted by the presence of "Pollution," the father's current disposition, Rick's fated path, and eventually, the ending). This seems to be a warning for human beings to be conscious of so-called "good intentions" in the modern world—and as Ishiguro mentioned in this interview—a call to "readjust society" ... "to avoid the savagery of meritocracy." I appreciate this book for what it can accomplish in a relatively short novel. It is haunting, hopeful, and humanistic.

Klara and the Sun is very similar to Never Let Me Go (the film, since I have not read the book yet lol) in terms of the concept, atmosphere, tone, and general feel of the book. Ishiguro also mentioned it acts as a companion book to Never Let Me Go. This novel also shares similar themes with films and TV shows like  Toy Story, Blade Runner, and Westworld. I was enamoured reading the scenes in the field with the tall grasses, the sun setting behind the barn in the countryside and behind the buildings in the city, and the way Ishiguro plays with reflections and patterns of light and shadow. The concept of light vs. darkness through imagery blends well throughout the novel as a way to balance Klara's child-like innocence with the grim reality of the world she inhabits and the mystery that unfolds later. 

I am quite biased because I am very interested in these themes regarding artificial intelligence and its future implications. I also enjoy reading speculative fiction (hence why I LOVE Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang).

Although Klara is a flawed narrator, I cannot help but feel for her. I want her to be a fully conscious and sentient being even though there were very obvious proof of her falling short (by her way of communicating and the limitations with her visual abilities). Although the scenes with the boxes and partitions in her viewpoint were a bit confusing to read, some say that her ability to breakdown the complexity of body language and facial cues contributes to her exceptional observational abilities. I was sort of rooting for her at the end (and was low-key hoping for a Dolores-level of self-awareness, Westworld style). However, I am still very much pleased with how it ended. This makes you think even after finishing the novel; it will stay in my mind for a while. This is my first Kazuo Ishiguro novel, and I cannot wait to read more of his work. 

P.S. As I was writing this review, Mr. Sun (miss da sun) by Greentea Peng  was coincidentally playing in the background—I cannot help but share how right that moment felt to me lol.

Found my self with a greater sense of awe day to day through Ishiguro's writing. The perspective of the AF is childlike with beautifully vivid descriptions of the mundane. Enjoyed the simple, yet compelling world he created. 

Eric Drake

isabelle

This book was such a fascinating portrayal of AI by almost humanizing it through Klara. Ishiguro did such an amazing job of making the reader the reader sympathise and care for a robot. Will definitely read more of his works in the future

i now see the sun in a different light :’)

Lettuce Wrapped Cabbage Cat

Hanna Rybchynska

Well, this book was really good. 

I loved how the writer introduced us to a world without explaining everything but showing it through the eyes of Artificial Intelligence. It is interesting how he keeps her vision all the same throughout the book. I like Klara and how she thinks and sees the world. The way she tries to understand the humans and believe in their best side. She was always an observer, and I, as a reader was also an observer of this world. 

This book doesn't necessarily have a twist, it focuses a lot on telling a story so we can have our own decisions and conclusions. We need to build the world using the story. 

Overall I think it is a great book, with a good message. It is a simple but at the same time complex story about love, family, and our place in this world, as people and also as AI.

Chloé

I liked the writing I thought it was beautifully written and Kazuo Ishiguro wrote Klara beautifully how he wrote and AI with a great curiosity. She felt human but you could tell through his brillant writing that she wasn't.
I was into it and then half way through part 2 it kinda lost me and if I'm honest I don't know why. I had to power my way through and even decided to read something else before I went screw it let me finish it. 
I would read something else by Kazuo Ishiguro cause his writing style is stunning.

I was so excited to read this book because Never Let Me Go is one of my all time favorite books, & I was excited to see what else this author had in store. this book had such an interesting premise, but unfortunately, for me, it fell flat. I’ll definitely still read his other works, but I fear nothing will beat Never Let Me Go 🥲

Katie Berges 

maitha mana

Eerie, it cosntantly felt off. Then i realized it's the same author as Never Let Me Go.

A thought provoking look at the world through the eyes of a seemingly conscious AI, some beautiful descriptions and a story arc I didn’t fully see coming, but it felt a little lacking towards the end.

Fred Rivett &
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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