Kazuo Ishiguro

Set in the near future, Klara is a solar-powered artificial friend (AF), a companion robot for kids. As the story opens, she and other AFs are in a store waiting to be purchased. In this society, parents have the option of genetically enhancing their children, known as being “lifted,” which also comes with health risks. The storyline includes a “lifted’ child and her friend, who has not been lifted.

The story is told by Klara. People know AFs are programmed to learn, so they explain show more things to her, allowing the reader to gain information about this world. Each AF has a distinct personality. Klara is acutely perceptive. She notices details and the emotional states of humans around her. She is encoded to alleviate loneliness. She loves the sun and sees it as a source of strength for humans as well as AFs.

In this society, the gap between the wealthy and impoverished has increased to the point where some people are “post-employed.” Pollution is an ongoing issue. Questions of individuality are brought up and characters take opposing sides – does each person have a unique essence or not? What does it mean to be human? If AFs existed, would we treat them as life-forms or store them in the closet with no second thoughts?

Ishiguro is drawing attention to the challenges we will face as we deal with ethical issues involving gene editing, artificial intelligence, environmental issues, and how they may be incorporated into society. We are at a point where these changes are just starting, and this book is a warning to make sure we address them with forethought and intention. I waited a few days after reading it to write this review, and I find I am repeatedly revisiting the ideas in this novel. To me, this lingering thought process is a mark of a great book. show less

I saw the movie years ago when it first came out, with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins, and thought it was a masterful, beautiful performance. I thought, how can the book live up to the movie?

But it does. It is interesting that the novel is told largely in retrospect, one man looking back over his life and wondering whether he made the right choices. He strove to live up to a certain standard, to inhabit a particular idea of service, and yet what did he accomplish at the end of the day; show more and what shall he do with the remains of the day?

The portrait of Mr. Stevens is so elegantly done; the portrait of Miss Kenton scarcely less so. These two people have chosen to serve everyone except themselves. It is in the subtext of their careers that their relationship lies, and that is also the tragedy.

The prose of the novel is simple and beautiful, and there is not a wasted word. POV is first person, single narrator, past tense. show less

Well written and psychologically astute. Ishiguro's portrait of the justifications surrounding service—in all senses of the word—manages to encompass the personal, political, and class anguish of a changing post-WWII England. He does a great job of building the narrator's deeply ingrained, but also furiously willed, sublimation of the self over the course of the story. That controlled pain, written with a steady hand but also compassion and a dry humor, was complex and struck a deep note show more for me: at what point does dedication cancel out the bearer? I'll be mulling this book over for a while, I think. show less

I feel like someone could and probably already has written a dissertation on this book. It's so good, so layered, with multiple possible interpretations of the actual facts of the story. The writing is crisp and there's an element of suspense (or wtf is going on?) that makes it a very quick read. The post-WWII Japan setting is amazing and educational. There's so much to think about politically. How does a country completely restructure itself and who gets left behind in the process? There show more are the themes of east vs. west, individualism vs familial bonds, meaning in motherhood, feminism, aging, grief, good vs evil, processing of the past... Every bit of this book is perfection, that fucked up, twisted ending included. show less