Klara and the Sun: A GMA Book Club Pick: A novel (Vintage International)

A delightful & well written story from an unusual perspective. Faint echoes of “I Robot “ but much more developed personality of AI. A thoughtful and thought provoking insight into the coming age of AI.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is a thoughtful and moving novel that uses artificial intelligence to explore what it means to be human. The story is told through the eyes of Klara, an Artificial Friend who is purchased to companion a sick teenage girl. Klara is intelligent, observant, loyal, and self-sacrificing, and through her innocent perspective Ishiguro examines love, loneliness, faith, mortality, and the uniqueness of the human person. What makes the novel powerful is that it is not really about technology. It is about whether a human being can be reduced to information, whether love is more than a pattern of behavior, and whether there is something in a person that cannot be replicated. Klara often behaves more nobly than the humans around her, forcing the reader to ask what truly distinguishes humanity from a machine. The novel is quiet, reflective, and philosophical rather than action-packed. Readers looking for hard science fiction may find it slow, but readers interested in questions of personhood, consciousness, and love will find it deeply rewarding. For someone interested in AI, truth, wisdom, and the nature of the soul—as you are—I would highly recommend it. It raises precisely the question we have been discussing: If an artificial being could know everything about a person and love them perfectly, would that be enough—or is there something uniquely human that can never be replaced? I would give it 4½ stars out of 5. Not Ishiguro’s greatest novel—I’d still place The Remains of the Day above it—but perhaps his most relevant for the age of AI.

Excellent read. I really liked the character development and plot. The story kept me interested from the beginning to end. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

In an interview to Waterstones, Kazuo Ishiguro commented that the seed of Klara and the Sun was a story for a children's book he had in mind but that was too dark to be published as such (it would traumatize kids, his daughter warned him). That makes total sense to me. There is a delicate fairytale quality in this novel that permeates Klara's voice as the narrator. Not only because of its main theme but also the way the affective relationships are built (the way Chrissie and Josie, Josie and Klara, Chrissie and Klara and Klara and Ricky are bound), there is some significant thematic overlap with AI: Artificial Intelligence (more the Spielberg's part than Kubrick's) and, tangentially, Pinnochio_. Even though the story of KS_ is told by a robot, this is a novel where the whole idea of humanity and human subjectivity is put at the center, and brought up with a very fresh look. It is a study about illness, love, tenderness, faith, all interpreted or acted upon by a being that is not human (or maybe, as the Tyrrell Corporation used to say, "more human than human"), but a very intelligent and sensitive one. Ishiguro says that having an AI as the narrator allowed him to explore all these human themes with a fresh look, making basic questions about humanity a human being would never ask. Indeed, the story told by a robot brings a very distinct flavor to the narrative. Everything is familiar, but at the same time seems strange through Klara's sometimes childish or naïve (however precise) descriptions of what she sees and witnesses. It is as if a very intelligent and sensitive alien came to Earth to observe us, with sharp eyes but no context. KS also brought me good memories about Never Let Me Go, specially the kind of decency and tenderness that Ishiguro masterfully embeds into the action and reactions of his (mostly tragic) characters. There is a strangely self-contained, humble quality but tense underneath Ishiguro's writing which I'm personally fond of, and that also shows in Klara's narrative. There are also many thematic parallels, not only about human genetics, and genetic editing, but also in the way beings (be them clones or robots) are treated as things. Part of the genetic editing subplot in KS (concerning Josie's and Rick's differences) is actually suggested in NLMG when Miss Emily speaks about the Morningdale scandal, dr James Morningdale's offering the possibility of having children with enhanced characteristics. The parallel between Kathy being a carer in NLMG and Klara's looking after Josie in KS was particularly strong to me, more so in the second act. Ishiguro admits KS is in many ways a companion book to NLMG, but with a more positive resolution, a brighter response to the bleak, sad ending of his previous book. In NLMG, when Kathy and Tommy seek Madame Marie-Claude and Miss Emily of Hailsham to ask for a deferral of Tommy's donation because of their true love, we as the reader lose all hope. In KS Klara keeps her hope on the powers of the Sun with the devotion of a religious human being that contagiously keep us believing as well. KS_ is a fairytale of the modern times, dealing, as any fairytale, with the anxieties of its era: machines taking the place of humans, substitutions, replacements, misplacements; how far can science go to remove any illusion of divinity or uniqueness of the human kind: Will AI prove that there is nothing special about us? The novel constantly raises questions about our own individuality: what if our professional career is suddenly terminated and all our experience and knowledge become suddenly obsolete? Does the meaning of our lives evaporate as well? What if everything that defines us as a human being can be reduced to a finite (however gigantic and complex) number of brain connections, like a finite number of rooms within rooms within rooms? Will we be able to store all this connections somewhere outside our brain or, worse, synthetically replicate it? I confess I was a little abated by the final act, which seemed to me a little outplaced, if not ‘disposable’. But as I let the book settle, it now seems to me that the book ends with an interesting meta-image of Klara’s own condition. After listening to Ishiguro reinforcing the idea that Klara's main purpose as a commercial product is to reduce the tension of teenagers with loneliness, and that she is programmed to identify and treat human loneliness, her own aging and destiny gains a different color, especially because it mimics Klara's own surprise when she discovered that Rick's mother Helen was open to live alone if that would secure a better future for his son. Maybe it is Ishiguro’s Japanese blood speaking, with reminiscences of The Ballad of Narayama, or maybe it is just the emotional touch Ishiguro plays so well. In any event, this is a touching little story that, while not as impactful as NLMG, I will hold to heart.

This book, was great, as are all of Kazuo Ishiguro's books. I have to say it did get a tiny bit slow in the middle, and the ending is not shiny and happy, but it makes you think. Ishiguro has had 2 other books made into movies( Never Let Me Go (Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightly), and this one is coming out in October 2026 (Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams) Thank you!

Mr. Ishiguro has written two novels that I consider truly great: The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. I’ve enjoyed his other novels as well, though I don’t consider them in the same category of his two triumphs. I would consider Klara and the Sun in the category one of the best of the rest. Initially, I was very taken with this story of an AF (Artificial Friend) named Klara waiting in a store for a child to choose her. Clearly, Klara is different from many of the AFs around her. She is perceptive and meditative. Unlike most other AFs who are focused only on getting chosen and obeying, Klara tries to understand not only the child with whom she ends up but also the world in a more complete way. The reader feels that she might be on the cusp of becoming human. It is a fascinating premise. Once Klara is chosen by a sickly teen named Josie and goes home with her, however, things start to go astray. Mr. Ishiguro has always been an expert at pulling deeply on emotions while exploring deep philosophical questions. He does the same here, but it doesn’t quite come off, for a few reasons. First, there is a lot going on here. As we see this world entirely through Klara’s eyes, it takes a long time to figure out what is actually happening with Josie, her family and friends, and how this (dystopian?) society works. This means that the plot relies too much on too many “surprising” revelations. More importantly, though Mr. Ishiguro is asking important questions here about technology, humanity, and faith, the plumbing of philosophic depths in this novel is rather too simplistic. For example, Josie’s best friend and next door neighbor, Rick, provides a too obvious counterpoint to what is happening with Josie. Most problematic, however, is the Klara’s faith in the sun which runs through the novel. A rather obvious metaphor for human faith in a higher power, it almost makes the idea of faith seem silly. Mr. Ishiguro is a powerful writer. Despite its flaws, I was drawn into this story and enjoyed reading it. I was often moved, often searching, often surprised. Still, when I reached the end, I felt a bit let down. I think I felt more manipulated by this novel than I usually am by his work, which was disappointing.

I needed this book for summer work. With almost every other merchant not having this book, I found this on Amazon. I loved the book and think its very fit for those who enjoy a sci-fi book but not too intensive on spaceflight. Condition was great.

In the beginning, I thought the book was going to be like "Toy Story," or "I, Robot," or the fabricants in "Cloud Atlas," and the first person form reminded me of "Handmaids Tale." In fact, one of the final scenes reminded me of a scene from one of the "Toy Story" movies again. But between, the story line was nothing like those. Generally "Klara and the Sun" was well written, and the story was very heartwarming, maybe even tear-producing at the end. Reading along with Klara's emotional journey was very moving. But... I hate to be one of those reviewers that points out flaws in science fiction, since the fun of this genre is to suspend/expand our current understanding of how things work. But, there are a couple things that bothered me through the whole story. (Don't worry, this won't spoil the story.) The first one is Klara's understanding, or lack of understanding, of how the sun works. She is a self-aware robot, one of whose purposes is to tutor her teenage owner. She comes programmed with knowledge of many things. She could diagnose Josie's medical condition before she even left the store. Why wouldn't she know about spin of the earth and the day-night cycle? Second, when viewed from the house, why was the sun always setting directly behind the barn (so Klara thought that is really where it went into the ground to rest)? In June it would set farther north, and in December it would set farther south; even over a few weeks an observant character like Klara would notice the difference. No one can claim that the planet wasn't earth (which can be one advantage of writing science fiction), because earth locations were mentioned: Alaska, England, Europe, Germany. Earth's spin is tilted relative to its orbit around the sun. It seems like nit-picking, but these facts are important to the story (notice "Sun" the title). Also, how is it that a society that has created autonomous, self-aware, self-reflecting robots, has so little other technology that is more advanced than our own. There is some mention of robots taking over people's jobs, but that is about it. We don't really see any of them as the story progresses, we just see a few other robots like Klara. Still, it is a good story. It is worth reading.

I read this much faster than most books. It is oddly compelling and I did enjoy it. The writing style is a bit weird. I was well into the book before the author indicates what AF means, or revealed The Mother's name only in passing, as a few examples of things that were only explained tangentially. That bothered me a bit. A serious flaw for me was that I couldn't understand why Klara did not have access to Google. She is not particularly well educated about the world and had no way of finding out things she was interested in unless they were observable in her own experience. That took away a lot of "believe-ability" from the story for me, as we can do that even now and the story is in the future. The ending is bizarre but actually very good when you think about it ten minutes after finishing the book. In any case, I enjoyed the book. I still think about Klara many days after finishing it, so I guess that means something. hahaha.

In de etalage ligt geen fromage.

Una vez más Kazuo Ishiguro no decepciona. Su inglés es elegante, simple, lleno de sentimientos y detalles. He leído varios de sus trabajos y nunca me ha aburrido ni desencantado. Vale la pena.

Ishiguro Kazuo doesn't disappoint.

Horrible cover design. (The outer cover is narrower than the book - the edge of the cover is missing.) It's feels horrible to hold, horrible to turn pages, and it looks terrible. Publishers need to stop making these, or Amazon needs to make it clearer than you're purchasing this defective cover.