Reading between the lines

My second book by Kazuo Ishiguro after The Remains of the Day. Written in the usual style of Ishiguro with beautiful but simple language and leaves you with unanswered questions. The book is about Artificial Friends (AFs) – robots with ability to understand human emotion besides the usual speech and mobility. These AFs are for “lifted children” – those who have been genetically altered to enhance their intelligence. The practice of lifting by then had become fairly common to the extent that many elite universities had closed their doors to those who had not been lifted. However, lifting comes at a cost – leaves the children weak and mortality rates are high. And of course, there is damned if you do damned if you don’t scenario for parents – should they lift their children in the hope for better opportunities and risk losing them or should they let them be? SPOILER ALERT, if you have not read it and would rather not know what it is about before you read it, stop reading right now. It