The Future is . . .

  . . . android?

That's the future of Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel, which ventures into territory usually occupied by science fiction. Klara is an AF (Artificial Friend), designed and built to be a cross between a servant and a best friend to the teenager whose parents can afford her. The matching process isn't as clear as a simple purchase, however; Klara is well aware of waiting in the store to be chosen by her person, hoping on several occasions that Josie, the teen in question, will select her from among the various AF models available. The fact that Klara has feelings about being purchased opens up new emotional territory for the reader and establishes a pattern that's repeated throughout the novel.

For all her ability to observe, deduce, learn, and respond, Klara's intelligence is limited and the world she inhabits is not always amenable to understanding. She labors under the delusion that because the sun is the source of her vitality (she is solar-powered), that humans, too, need sunlight to live. A pollution-causing street repair device becomes a doomsday machine in her view. A barn on a nearby property takes on particular significance because the sun appears to retire there each night. All these things could be humorous or stupid errors, but Klara's good-heartedness and desire to help Josie recover from her mysterious illness make them endearing mistakes. We want Klara to be right, but we remain on her side and sympathetic when she is wrong.

The humans in the story have their own relationships with natural and supra-natural traits. Josie and her mother struggle to relate to each other, as mothers and teenaged daughters often do. At the same time, Josie has been genetically engineered to be more successful academically, which may be the cause of her mysterious illness. Josie's mother insists that Josie have her "portrait" done, and that turns out to be a creepy and poorly-conceived attempt at creating an AF version of Josie if needed in the future. There are other twists and turns, throughout  which humans fare poorly compared with Klara, if judged on dedication and kindness.

It's a stroke of genius that Ishiguro's exploration of what it means to be human is couched in a novel about an android. In the present day, however, when we feel more and more blended with our machines -- using Google or Apple to access knowledge that used to live in our brains and navigating in the car from a mapping app rather than memory, to name just a few examples -- the success of his work means that Klara's story seems destined to stay with us for a long, long time.

Excerpt:

That was one reason why we always thought so much about being in the [store] window. Each of us had been promised our turn, and each of us longed for it to come. That was partly to do with what Manager called the "special honor" of representing the store to the outside. Also, of course, whatever Manager said, we all knew we were more likely to be chosen while in the window. But the big thing, silently understood by us all, was the Sun and his nourishment. Rosa did once bring it up with me, in a whisper, a little while before our turn came around.

"Klara, do you think once we're in the window, we'll receive so much goodness we'll never get short again?"

I was still quite new then, so didn't know how to answer, even though the same question had been in my mind.

Note: This book counts towards to Mount TBR Reading Challenge and the Color Coded Reading Challenge.