Kazuo Ishiguro has given us just eight novels over his forty year career. Each one is a perfect but unique pearl that bears little resemblance to the works that have preceded it. So it was with excitement and curiosity that I plunged into Klara and the Sun.
Kazuo Ishiguro
In the first few pages, I erroneously assumed that Klara, with her obsession with sunlight, was a plant. It wouldn’t be off-brand for Ishiguro to write a book from a plant’s point of view, because after novels about butlers, organ donation and Britain in the Middle Ages, little would surprise me.
The truth is no less strange. Klara is in fact an ‘AF’, or ‘Artificial Friend’, waiting in a store to be chosen by a child like a puppy in a pet shop. The novel is written from Klara’s point of view and although she is clearly an artificial being, the complexity and subtlety of emotions appear human-like to the reader.
Like the butler Stevens in Ishiguro’s Booker-winning The Remains of the Day, Klara’s life’s purpose is to serve. When she is selected by a family to become a permanent companion and best friend to their ailing child, she takes the task to heart and learns all there is to know about this family, their motivations and how to make her child happy.
But all is not as it seems in the world of Klara and the Sun. Not all children are created equal in these times, with privileged children being enhanced to become ‘lifted’ to give them a competitive intellectual edge over others. The process is seemingly risky and has taken its toll on Klara’s child.
Was Klara really chosen by this family as a companion for this ill child, or is the truth much darker? The answer to this question plays out as only Ishiguro can tell it …
Do your homework
If you’ve finished Klara and the Sun and find yourself wanting more, Ishiguro’s back catalogue is a treasure trove, with one Booker winner and three Booker shortlisted novels.
The Remains of the Day is still his classic work, focusing on an aging butler reflecting on a life dedicated to service over all, even to the detriment of affairs of the heart. It won Ishiguro a Booker Prize in 1989 and the character of Stevens was brought to life by Anthony Hopkins in the movie adaptation.
Never Let Me Go at first glance appears to run along similar lines, focusing on a group of privileged students at an English boarding school. But there is a darker twist and the book veers from a classic coming of age tale to border on science fiction. Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan starred in the film adaptation, which is well worth your viewing. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
An Artist of the Floating World is a novel of reminiscences from a well known artist in post war Japan. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
When We Were Orphans follows a London detective investigating the death of his parents between London and Shanghai in the years between WWI and WWII. This is another one that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
—Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Allen & Unwin) is out on the 2nd of March.
Klara and the Sun
This is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, 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.
A thrilling feat of world-building, a novel of exquisite tenderness and impeccable restraint...
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