Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun Is Another Stellar Achievement

Ernest Hemingway once made a dismissive remark about Nobel Prize winners in which he declared that once people win the prize they don't produce anything good or important again. (This is my paraphrase.) Kazuo Ishiguro's remarkable Klara and the Sun proves that such pronouncements are absurd. 

Ishiguro demonstrates once again why he is considered one of the great writers of our time. The English language has a shortage of superlatives to describe the power of his prose, so I shan't even attempt it. 

When I was asked yesterday what genre he writes in, it seemed impossible to explain. Magical Realism? Literary Exceptionalism? Maybe "serious literary fiction" says it best. 

Good Morning America Book Club, NYTimes Bestseller, and Best Book selection by numerous others.... 

Ishiguro's stories are always original, the characters vividly drawn. Klara and the Sun is no exception. A writer's first task is to draw you in, and from the opening paragraphs you are hooked, willing to go wherever he plans to take you. For any reader seeking more than superficial escapism, Ishiguro's books always deliver a payoff. (I have to qualify this remark. In reading the Amazon reviews afterward, I see that a number of people disliked this story. I will give my reasons for liking it and recommending it.)

The novel is told in first person from the point of view of Klara, an AF, which is short for Artificial Friend. In other words, she is an intelligent robot that families can buy from a store downtown. The AFs are designed to befriend children and to be kind.

Part One
The story begins with 45 pages about life in the retail store for AFs. Klara is paired with Rosa, which gives the author a chance to show how Klara is extremely perceptive to such a degree that is unique for an AF. The AFs are solar powered, which explains Klara's unusual relationship to the sun. Eventually Josie comes into her life.

Part Two
The next 60 pages detail life with her new family. It is a three story house in the country. The Mother is a professional woman, Josie somewhere in her teens and Melania Housekeeper is the third member of the household. We learn that Josie had a sister who died, and that Josie herself is sickly so that everyone worries about her surviving. There is also a house next door and we soon get to know a boy named Rick. As the story progresses there are things we don't know but, as in a mystery novel, we feel their weight in the way Klara tells the story. 

Part Three 
The relationship between Josie and Rick is explored and challenged as their expectations for the future seem to collide with present realities. We learn more about Rick's family after Klara visits their house, and we see how much Josie's illness impacts nearly everyone around her.

Part Four
In this section we meet the scientist/artist Mr. Capaldi and Josie's father. There is a clash between each of the characters that turns pretty ugly. Issues regarding motivations, fears and a sense of impending doom color the atmosphere, yet Klara throughout has maintained a sense of irrational hope. 

Parts Five and Six
The last two sections of the book tie together a number of clues that have been sown throughout and answer the questions that may have been raised in the reader's mind. 

One of the themes in this and other Ishiguro stories has to do with what it means to be human. Loneliness is another recurring theme. The challenges presented by relationships are part of his stories as well -- misunderstandings, fear of being hurt, et.

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Kazuo Ishiguro. Creative commons.

Not all the reviewers at Amazon.com fell in love with this book, so I can't promise this is for you. For me, however, I not only read as a reader but as a writer as well. I get mesmerized by the manner in which a great writer weaves a spell on the reader. I am especially impressed when a writer creates a unique narrator and is consistent throughout for 250 pages and more. An example of this might be Graham Greene's The End of the Affair in which the narrator tells a story, but the reader understands that the narrator is not reading things correctly.

In Klara, anxiety sets the tone from near the beginning. When she sees Josie in the store, will Josie come back? Will Josie recover from her illness? Will Rick and Josie live happily ever after in a world as broken as this? Will Klara fulfill her mission? As in real life, we never really know how things will turn out, so we have to keep following our path.

Maureen Corrigan of NPR described this as “one of the most affecting and profound novels Ishiguro has written….I'll go for broke and call Klara and the Sun a masterpiece that will make you think about life, mortality, the saving grace of love: in short, the all of it.”

Followers of this blog will know that I am a fairly big fan of Kazuo Ishiguro. People ask if he is a Japanese writer. The answer is that he was born in Nagasaki but grew up in England since age five. He's won numerous awards including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017.

Here are some of the posts I've written about his other books, as well as an interview about Dylan that appeared in a 2008 Paris Review. 

Ishiguro Again Shows His Mastery in Never Let Me Go

In Awe of Ishiguro's The Buried Giant

A 3-Day Ride with Ryder: Ishiguro's The Unconsoled

Kazuo Ishiguro On Dylan

Ishiguro's Klara Is Apparently No Fiction

I have a habit of acquiring, through purchase or library borrowing, more books than I will read. My curious approach to reading is to try to read a little of each one. Afterwards, I have three stacks: must read, hope to read, most likely not finish. Books in the latter stack that are library books will be returned. If they are books in my possession, they will be shelved. 

Which brings us to Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun. Kazuo Ishiguro is unquestionably one of the great novelists of our time. At this moment Klara and the Sun is in my Must Read stack. Having a book like Klara in that stack is forcing me to finish two other books there so I can dig into it. 

In the Ken Burns documentary on Ernest Hemingway this past year, Hemingway is quoted as saying that writers who win a Nobel Prize never produce anything great again. Ishiguro is proving Hemingway wrong. 

Ishiguro's stories are beautifully crafted and each an original. He paints such vivid characters and scenes and always leaves you feeling something and engaged in reflection. For example, in Never Let Me Go the story is told by a character who is nearing her life's end and discovering how many different ways she misunderstood what she experienced while living it earlier. This led me to reconsider many events in my own life and the ways I failed to see what was really happening.

WHAT PROMPTED this excursion into Ishiguro's writings was an article I came across this week about robots being created to serve as assistants for health care providers. Their mission, among other things, is to brighten people's lives. They can also do "talk therapy."

For the past 30 years I've held the opinion that by the time Baby Boomers are in nursing homes, there would be renewed opening of our borders to immigration in order to have more workers available to attend to our needs. (i.e. empty bedpans, keep us company, etc.) It never entered my mind that robots might be created for this purpose one day. 

The article is a photo gallery with a bit of description as regards what you are seeing. It's titled, Meet Grace, the healthcare robot COVID-19 created.

Having been introduced to Klara, the AI narrator of Ishiguro's novel, I can hardly wait to hear the rest of her story. 

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Related Links

See my reviews of two other Ishiguro novels I've read in the past couple years.
The Buried Giant
The Unconsoled