BY KAZUO ISHIGURO
I have liked every Japanese story I have read. But they were only written by Haruki Murakami.
Kazuo Ishiguro won Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 and I have been trying to read one of his books and I had this urge to read a sci-fi novel recently. So, I went ahead and read Klara and the sun.
Klara is an Artificial Friend who is supposed to be companion of children. She is in a shop waiting to be bought and to be a friend to one of the children out there. Klara’s observation skills are remarkable compared to other AFs.
She then becomes AF of a child named Josie. Josie is smart, quirky and she loves Klara for who she is.
Ishiguro has wondered for all his part. When the people come across Klara, they often don’t know how to address her, should they treat her like one of the people, is that right or should she be treated for who she really is, as in a man made device.
Klara is solar-powered, so according to her conscience, everything comes from the sun, the energy for the day, the power to the world. The sun acts as the ultimate being to her, helping in all her needs and she assumes that the same energy is bestowed on all of the people on the earth.
Of course, a human heart is bound to be complex. But it must be limited. Josie’s heart may well resemble a strange house with rooms inside rooms.
Josie has a friend Rick. Rick lives beside her house. A couple of fifteen years old, hanging out, and they are very good friends, in fact they would like to have more than friendship when they grow up and have a world to conquer. Josie falls sick often, which her mother often points out, maybe because Josie was not lifted, it still makes her life more difficult. The term lifted, was not deliberately explained anywhere and I assumed it meant genetically modified at a young age, to increase a kid’s intelligence, immunity and overall state.
Josie, like other kids studies in her oblong, and the kids get together once in a while, in the form of a social interaction party, in order to make peer communication better when all of them go off to college.
This is the extent of the world that Ishiguro tries to portray. But since, Klara is the protagonist, we get to have an interesting peek of what’s on her mind, which is a wonderful speculative imagination that the author has displayed.
Klara wonders often, where she stays, more often like the confusion of the guests. Whether should she excel in what she was built to do and act as an excellent AF by a set of protocols or try to understand what humans think and feel in order to act as the perfect AF for Josie. She was exceptional in being Josie’s AF, with all the efforts she could pitch in.
All in all, it got pretty interesting when I was midway through the book. It’s all about questions and non stopping wonders of the world of humans.
Rating: 4/5
Lit Loom 