“What does it mean to love?”
That is the question this dystopian sci-fi by Kazuo Ishiguro explores, or at least it tries to. The book is about the titular character of Klara, who is an AF, or Artificial Friend for rich and “lifted” (we will come back to that later) kids. She stands in a store, hoping for someone to choose her as a friend and take her home, all the while observing her surroundings and thinking that the Sun is some form of God, as the AFs are solar powered. But when she is finally chosen, the manager of the store warns her not to put too much faith in the promises of a human.
Review: I would like to start this review by saying that I was jumping up and down with excitement to read this book, as Ishiguro has become one of my favorite writers recently. Right off the bat, Ishiguro’s prose hits you like a fast-flowing river. The words simply flow, and the righting style is beautiful, as expected from his writings. The story sets up beautifully with our protagonist having inner monologues while pondering the magical workings of the world outside her store. Unfortunately, those are the only positive things I can say about this book. While the idea was beautiful, the execution was somewhat lacking, for the want of a better word. Initially, I found the protagonist really interesting, and she had my sympathy right off the bat, but the author keeps repeating the same words and thoughts again and again and again, making it quite monotonous and repetitive (just like I tried to do with this sentence). The story progresses extremely slowly. Ishiguro does an admirable job in the beginning to keep the “twist” under wraps, something he has done extremely well before in Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant. However, unlike those books, you stop caring about it fast as the book fails to form any sort of grip on the reader. The reader is never fully informed what "lifted" means other than it is a genetic engineering approach to make the rich children superior to other humans, and why these children are treated the way they are in the society. We get some glimpses of the dynamics between different form of relationships like mother-daughter, father-daughter, mother-son, etc, but all of it becomes eclipsed with the obsession Klara has with the Sun. For being tagged as extremely “observing” in nature, the author does a poor job in building up on these relationships through Klara’s POV. The book lacks his typical subtly and we are hit repeatedly (there is that word again) in the head with the issues the book is trying to focus on. Some of the ideas that the book presents, such as replacing a dead child with a robot to help cope with the loss for a parent is simply laughable and goes against all thing’s human nature.
There is a brief redemption at the end of the book in the form of the end that the titular character faces is admirable and saddening, to say the least, saying more about us humans in those last few pages than the author does in the whole book. Sadly, it arrives a little bit too late, even if the book is only 340 pages long, as you are too bored and uncaring at that point to be moved by it at all.
As some who absolutely adores Ishiguro’s work, I was disappointed in this book.
2.5/5 stars.
by TheReaderDude_97