Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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 takes a few pages before you realize that the book is written in the first person through the AF named Klara. It starts in the store that sells these AFs. The AFs are solar powered from which comes the name of the book. To the AF, the sun appear like a deity, offers them life and energy. An AF cherishes the time spent near windows where it gets ample sunlight and during the course of the book, we find the AF treating them just like Gods – confessing to them, offering them sacrifices. Whether this is a natural consequence of them being solar powered or have they been programmed to view the sun as a supreme being to be able to empathize with humans, that is not clear in the book. The AF in question Klara is visited by a lifted child Josie and even before she is bought, forms a bond with the child. She expects to be eventually bought by the child despite being warned by the store manager that children make promises all the time. Almost like an adolescent admonished by a parent over a first love that is merely a fleeting feeling and not something to throw away one’s life over. In this case however, Klara the AF is eventually bought by the child Josie.

Josie is a lifted child and soon it unravels that she is the second child to her mother with the first one also being lifted but not surviving. Seems like a brave decision to lift the second child when you have already lost the other. Even more so when Josie and another child called Rick who are of the same age are growing up in the same area, but Rick’s mother decides not to lift him. Josie’s mother is divorced and later the father enters the picture briefly. Even more strange is the fact that Josie’s father has turned into some form of a rebel who are against automation and robots since it appears he has lost his factory job as a result of automation. Again, Ishiguro seems to dangle the question – did Josie’s mother decide to lift her children to spite him? Even if it meant she might end up losing them?

About Klara, a very interesting way of presenting an Artificial Intelligence based robot. One would expect a robot to have remarkable dexterity. The primary objective of any robotics engineer is to enhance its motion to surpass humans. Klara on the other hand has limited mobility – finds it hard to navigate uneven ground. At times when trying to cross fields, she needs help from humans. But then again, she can mimic basic movement of humans. As an example, before she was purchased, Josie’s mother asks Klara to mimic Josie’s walk for Josie has a limp and Klara does so. Feels like as if the AF has been given just so much mobility as needed to be a companion to a child and nothing more.

Klara has the ability to understand human emotion but in terms of feeling, an AF feels primarily loyalty towards the human. Here again, there is an interesting twist. There are times when Klara indulges in schemes that seem far more conniving than you would expect from an AF. Klara deciphers the love between Josie and Rick and asks Rick for help in a scheme. When Josie takes ill, Klara uses Josie’s father to indulge in an act of vandalism in a mere silly belief that the act would please the sun (her God) which in turn would bless Josie with good health. But all these acts are carried out for Josie’s well-being. Here again, Ishiguro leaves us with the thought – has Klara been programmed to use her judgement for the well-being of her mistress? And if so, how far will the programme allow her to go?

As the book progresses, there is another twist. After the loss of her first child, Josie’s mother asked a fabricator to create a life-like doll resembling Josie’s dead sister. The doll was inadequate as a substitute and was later discarded. It turns out Josie’s mother had been planning for the possibility of Josie’s death by creating another doll resembling Josie. For this purpose, she has been taking Josie to the same fabricator for posing sessions. One begins to wonder what kind of a woman Josie’s mother was, having lost her first lifted child, decided to go ahead with lifting the second and furthermore planning for the death of the second as well. Was it a survival mechanism where modern parents who were expected to lift their children were conditioned into thinking it was acceptable to plan for their loss? One can almost relate to the state of parents in modern times who will subject their children through all forms of brutal cram schools and sports camps because that is the norm of the day. Josie’s mother has further planned out the role Klara will play in continuing Josie if Josie were indeed to die.

At a later part of the book, Josie becomes ill to the point of death. It appears like everyone was expecting the inevitable to occur and a deep gloom settles in the house. Josie’s friend Rick continues to visit her though she can barely move. Interestingly, there is a part where Josie’s mother confronts Rick about whether he feels happy that he was not lifted. What was Ishiguro trying to portray Josie’s mother as? Was he trying to paint parents who chose to throw their children in the rat race as monsters? The decision to lift Josie was after all Josie’s mother alone.

The book ends with Josie recovering and finally gaining entrance to a prestigious university. With this, Klara’s role comes to an end. Quite sadly, she is cast away into a dump where all AFs whose role has ended are left until their mechanisms break down completely. The manager of the store pays a surprise visit to the dump and finds Klara to ask her how the project turned out. Ironically, the manager is thrilled that the project was a “success” with Josie eventually moving onto higher studies.