Klara and the Sun

New York Times Best Sellers

4 months ago

8

An “Artificial Friend” named Klara is purchased to serve as a companion to an ailing 14-year-old girl.

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Sherlene

10 months ago

8

Very thought provoking and a reflection of humanity

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At first quite interesting but from the middle through the end was really disappointing and repetitive.

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Abby Cole

2 months ago

5

This book wasn’t for me. Writing was quite simplistic and I was listening to the audio book and found the readers voice really distracting . I didn’t finish the book so it will be one I’ll come back to and try to get into a bit more

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Publishers Weekly

4 months ago

8

Nobel laureate Ishiguro takes readers to a vaguely futuristic, technologically advanced setting reminiscent of his Never Let Me Go for a surprising parable about love, humanity, and science. Klara is an Artificial Friend (AF), a humanlike robot designed to be a child’s companion. She spends her days watching humans from her perch in the AF store, fascinated by their emotions and hungry to learn enough to help her future owner. Klara, who is solar-powered, reveres the sun for the “nourishment” and upholds “him” as a godlike figure. Klara is eventually bought by teenager Josie and continues to learn about humans through her interactions with Josie’s family and childhood friend. When Josie becomes seriously ill, Klara pleads with the sun to make her well again and confronts the boundary between service and sacrifice. While the climax lends a touch of fantasy, Klara’s relationship with the sun, which is hidden at times by smog, touches on the consequences of environmental destruction. As with Ishiguro’s other works, the rich inner reflections of his protagonists offer big takeaways, and Klara’s quiet but astute observations of human nature land with profound gravity (“There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her,” Klara says). This dazzling genre-bending work is a delight.

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John Szakacs

7 months ago

7

Great start, decent middle, but the last bit didn’t seem as believable. It didn’t flow well after the morning of sunshine

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Livvi Frazer

8 months ago

8

Great book- for me the narrator was a little off with the whole “cyborg” character occasionally but over all very good.

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