They say that every book an author writes explores the same themes. Reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro got me thinking about how this very different novel raises similar issues to the other two Ishiguro books I have read, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. In my view, Ishiguro is exploring what it means to be born into a position of servitude to others.
In The Remains of the Day, we enter the mind and experiences of a butler in a grand house in England. In his futuristic dystopian novel, Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro imagines the lives of teenagers who have been cloned for organ donation. While Klara and the Sun is a futuristic novel like Never Let Me Go, its future is not so distant from the present day when artificial intelligence is becoming a greater part of our lives. We are moving from robotic vacuum cleaners and cars that keep us a safe distance from the car in front to the development of human-like robots who may well be caring for us in old age.
In Klara and the Sun, the narrator Klara is a companion robot for children. She is solar-powered and sees the sun as a source of nourishment not just for her, but for Josie, the child whose companion she becomes. As the novel opens, Klara is in a store, waiting to be chosen. She is unusual because of her observational and deductive powers and her strong sense of curiosity. Ishiguro establishes her superior abilities through clever details of Klara’s observations about the people and events she sees in the street outside the store. When Klara is chosen by Josie and her mother, she enters a far more complex and challenging world.
As in other Ishiguro novels, Klara accepts her status and is loyal and devoted to the child she serves. Later in the story, she sets out on a difficult quest to get Josie the help she needs. At the same time, she continues her observations and finds that Josie and her family are more variable than Artificial Friends in their emotions and motivations. Driving the tension in the novel is the question of what this will mean for Klara. You’ll have to read it to see.
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