"Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro

My wife's favourite book, shortlisted for the 2022 fiction of the year prize in the British Book Awards and longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize.

The narrator, Klara, is a robot, designed to have empathy so that she can be an Artificial Friend to a child. The narration is straightforward and matter of fact, enabling Ishiguro to emulate Kafka (as he also seems to in his novel The Unconsoled), who told the strangest tales as if they were everyday occurences. 

Not only is Ishiguro emulating Kafka, by using a non-human narrator he can adopt a 'Man from Mars' approach, observing human social interactions. For example:

• "She ... held Josie in an embrace that seemed to go on and on, until the Mother was obliged to introduce a rocking motion to disguise how long it was lasting." (Part Two, p 92)
• "I saw more insects hovering before me in the air, nervously exchanging positions, but unwilling to abandon their friendly clusters." (Part Three, p 156 - 157)

At the same time, by endowing Klara with a (perfectly subservient) personality, he is exploring the ethical relationships between humans and such created artefacts. For example, in the first part, when Klara is in the Store waiting to be purchased, there are notes not only of an orphanage, whose inmates hope for adoption, but also a pet shop and a slave market. 

Klara is solar powered, so she has a key relationship with the Sun, a relationship which begins in the first paragraph. She superstitiously conceives of the Sun as a divine being, able to grant the gift of life, to whom she can address prayers. Ishiguro seems to be saying that a quasi-conscious robot would have a spiritual side to it. This aspect of the book reminded me of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Ishiguro's The Buried Giant. 

Ishiguro's Klara perceives the world through pattern recognition software, which seems to resolve the world into a cubist painting, all disconnected shapes which sometimes fuse into a more rounded portrait than a conventional perception. At times of stress, or when the nscene is changing rapidly or the lighting is poor, her visual field seems to become divided into boxes, some of which contain the same image but with subtle variations, suggesting either that the image has changed with time or that there are layers of meaning. For example:

• "The sky from the bedroom rear window was ... capable of surprising variations. Sometimes it was the color of the lemons in the fruit bowl, then could turn to the gray of the slate chopping-boards. When Josie wasn't well, it could turn the color of her vomit or her pale feces, or even develop streaks of blood. Sometimes the sky would become divided into a series of squares, each one a different shade of purple to its neighbor." (Part Two, p 52) 
• “Josie was near the middle of the room talking with three guest girls. Their heads were almost touching, and because of how they were standing, the upper parts of their faces, including all their eyes, had been placed in a box on the higher tier, while all their mouths and chins had been squeezed into a lower box. The majority of the children were on their feet, some moving between boxes. Over at the rear wall, three boys were seated on the modular sofa, and even though they were sitting apart, their heads had been placed together inside a single box, while the outstretched legs of the boy nearest the window extended not only across the neighboring box, but right into the one beyond. There was an unpleasant tint on the three boxes containing the boys on the sofa - a sickly yellow - and anxiety passed through my mind.” (Part Two; p 70)
• “Soon the scenes were changing so rapidly around me I had difficulty ordering them. At one stage a box became filled with the other cars, while the box immediately beside it filled with segments of road and surrounding field. I did my best to preserve the smooth line of the road as it moved from one box into the next, but with the view constantly changing, I decided this wasn't possible, and allowed the road to break and start afresh each time it crossed a border.” (Part Two; p 97)
• “The mother leaned closer over the table top and her eyes narrowed till her face filled eight boxes, leaving only the peripheral boxes for the waterfall, and for a moment it felt to me her expression varied between one box and the next. In one, for, her eyes were laughing cruelly, but in the next they were filled with sadness.” (Part Two; p 104)
• “We drove past a large creature with numerous limbs and eyes, then even as I watched, a crack appeared down its center. As it divided itself, I realized it had been, all along, two separate people - a runner and a dog walk woman - moving in opposite directions who for an instant happened to be passing one another.” (Part Four; p 217)
• “The figures became more simplified, as if constructed out of cones and cylinders made from smooth card. Their clothes, for instance, were devoid of the usual creases and folds, and even their faces under the streetlight appeared to be created by cleverly placing flat surfaces into complex arrangements to create a sense of contouring.” (Part Four; p 235)

This technique lends the narrative verisimilitude and enables Ishiguro to create strikingly original descriptions and also maintain that robotic matter-of-fact voice that makes the futuristic and other-worldly aspects of the narrative more credible.

The way that Ishiguro drips clues into the story, so that the reader has to piece together what is happening, is fantastic. (He does much the same in Never Let Me Go). For example, we learn quite quickly that Rick has not been 'lifted' but it is only much later in the book that we understand what this means. The significance of an incident in the first part of the book only becomes clear much later.

Selected quotes:

• "My cello-playing, even at its glorious best, sounded like Dracula's grandmother." (Part Two, p51)
• “The grass was tall in all three fields, and when the wind blew, it would move as if invisible passers-by were hurrying through it.” (Part Two; p 52)
• "What was becoming clear to me was the extent to which humans, in their wish to escape loneliness, made maneuvers that were very complex and hard to fathom." (Part Three, p 113)
• "It became normal for me to remain during Rick's visits, even though he sometimes looked towards me with go-away eyes" (Part Three, p 117)
• "Not only was her voice loud, it was as if it had been folded over onto itself, so that two versions of her voice were being sounded together, pitched fractionally apart." (Part Three, p 179)
• "Mr Capaldi believed that there was nothing special inside Josie that couldn't be continued. He told the Mother he'd searched and searched and found nothing like that. But I believe now he was searching in the wrong place. There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her." (Part Six, p 306)

A beautifully written book by a master. Shortlisted for the 2021 Waterstones Book of the Year

I am a little bemused by the use of American spellings. My copy of the book was published in London, UK in 2021. 

Also by Ishiguro and reviewed on this blog:

• When We Were Orphans
• The Remains of the Day

Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in 2017. Other Nobel Laureates reviewed in this blog can be found here

This review was originally written in July 2021 and updated in May 2026; 307 pages
First published by Faber and Faber in 2021

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Spoiler alert: a summary of the plot

Klara is remarkable in her powers of observation. While at the store she notices, outside, Beggar Man and his Dog. They spend a whole day so immobile that she thinks they are dead but the next day they have revived. She attributes this apparent resurrection to the healing powers of the Sun. One day, her view of the sun is marred by a road-mending machine with Cootings written on its side which belches smoke into the air. After some time, Klara is sold to Josie and her mum, after she has demonstrated to the Mother that she imitate Josie's idiosyncratic walk successfully.

At Josie's house, Klara learns how to be a successful AF. She also discovers that Josie is ill. She enjoys looking out across the fields at the evening sun which seems to set into Mr McBain's barn. Klara meets Rick, Josie's friend, who lives with his mum in a neighbouring property. He has designed some drones. There is a dreadful teenage party in which other friends of Josie come to socialise: they are all 'lifted' except for Rick. Josie becomes too ill to go on a promised trip to a nearby waterfall, so the Mother takes Karla instead.

There was another daughter, Clara, who died. The implication is that both Clara and Josie were lifted, an operation on their genetic makeup that has risks; that this is what killed Clara and this is why Josie is ill. Rick's mother decided not to risk it for him and therefore doomed him to dead end jobs and a second-class status.

Josie becomes even more ill and Rick starts to come round regularly and they play a game where she draws a picture with empty bubbles and he fills in the words. Rick's mother wants him to try for a college which still accepts non-lifted kids. Josie and Rick argue. Klara decides to go to the barn to ask the Sun to give his special healing rays to Josie but it's a long way and she has to be piggy-backed by Rick. There, she promises the Sun that in return for his help, she will destroy the polluting Cootings machine.

A trip to town. Josie and the Mother are going to see Mr Capaldi, who is making a 'portrait' of Josie. At his studio, Klara discovers that the portrait is a sculpture, a doll, and the plan is that Klara will learn to imitate Josie exactly and then inhabit the doll, so that if and when Josie dies the Mother will have another 'Josie'. The meet the Father, who is a talented engineer who has been supplanted by robots and now lives in a commune which is seeking to defend itself. The Father takes Klara to find the Cootings machine and helps Klara immobilise it, but it needs a significant amount of fluid from Klara's 'brain' which Klara sacrifices. Rick's mother takes him to see her ex-lover Mr Vance, a tutor at the college, hoping Rick will gain some favouritism, but the meeting ends disastrously as Mr Vance recalls all his resentment against Rick's mother from when their relationship broke down.

Josie gets worse and becomes very ill, dangerously close to death.. Klara has discovered that there are more than one Cootings machines. She goes to the barn and apologises to the Sun. On this occasion, she seems to have hallucinations, mingling what she observes with memories of the Mother's house and the Store. 

Josie recovers.

Josie goes to college; Rick meets up with friends in town, accepting his reduced possibilities. Klara, no longer wanted, retreats to a store cupboard.

Our last glimpse of Klara is in a scrap yard.