Klara and the Sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hardcover, 303 pages

English language

Published Jan. 7, 2021 by Faber & Faber.

ISBN:: 978-0-571-36487-9

(7 reviews)

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, 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?

17 editions

Noisy Deadlines reviewed Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Missed Opportunities

2 stars

The premise is beautiful, it hints at deep reflections about being human, but it didn't work for me. The dialogues were super weird and unnatural, they really bothered me. I missed more exploration of the technology behind the Artificial Friends (AF) and how they worked. Was Klara all mechanical? Was she an android? I wasn't convinced that AF's would find mystical significance in the Sun. The story hints at several themes but never really goes deep: environmental pollution, empathy, robots taking over human jobs, loneliness, gene editing, social class privilege. The plot is super simple and predictable, and the ending was very bleh. Probably not my thing.

Rachel Unkefer reviewed Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

A lot of setup for not much payoff

3 stars

What even was this? A parable? A fairy tale? An allegory? Was it about religion? About artificial intelligence and how it can spawn its own superstition? This seemed to me a huge amount of world-building and excruciating detail just to say‚ what?

finktank reviewed Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro is a modern master

5 stars

I love everything I've ever read by Kazuo Ishiguro. His prose isn't filled with vocab words and doesn't ever even feel anything but mundane, and yet somehow, every single line is poetry. This book did not disappoint. Lovely, loving, heart-rending... and also exploring the very real potential futures of artificial intelligence, machine learning, friendship, and disposability.

sunstone reviewed Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Worthwhile but not one of my recent favs

3 stars

Content warning Ending mention

I guess I get it a little bit, but I don’t really get it. Felt a little bit like a YA novel and not just because main characters where kids. It’s told from the POV of someone who only partially understands what she observes but is very observant nonetheless.

The ending could’ve swung for the fences a little more, I feel.