Kazou Ishiguro

Fiction 2021 | 320 pages

(re-post.  I accidentally deleted this review!)

I had no idea what I was getting into when I opened to the first page of Klara and the Sun.  A friend recommended it and I blindly set about reading it.  From the cover, I thought it was going to be about geisha girls or some such.  How surprised I was to discover it was about seeing the world through the eyes of an AF ... an Artificial Friend.  Yes, Klara is a robot who is purchased to be Josie's AF, a young teenage girl with her share of family trauma, and an illness that may take her life.

I loved this book!  What I so enjoyed is how Klara elegantly observes human behavior in order to learn what humans perceive and think ... but especially, what they feel and why they feel it.  Ishiguro especially explores love, loneliness, and hope.  He has created a simple mechanism for standing outside human consciousness and attempting to glean knowledge about what we feel and do, through the keen observation and insight of a robot.

I found Klara and the Sun not only easy to read, but delightful.  I simply enjoyed being inside Klara's observational "brain." Some reviewers say Klara and the Sun offers an exploration of how Artificial Intelligence may show up in our lives in the future. I didn’t perceive that intention from Ishiguro.  It read as a pure novel to me.

Now, for the grain of salt.  The average review in Goodreads is a 3.81. This is a fairly low rating.  As I perused the reviews, there were many five stars and many one stars.  Another book that polarizes.  So, what can I say?  I hope you read it and desire to rate it "four hearts."   But if your review is at the low end of the scale, I would love to hear that, too. Yes, clearly, I recommend this book.

December 2021