Klara and the Sun
What does it mean to be human?
The story is set in America, where Klara is an Artificial Friend (AF), a robot designed to be a companion to genetically “lifted” teenagers. These teenagers are taught completely online to prepare for college — which probably explains the need for a companion. Josie, a lifted teenager visits the store where Klara is, interacts with her and promises to come back for her. While waiting for Josie to come back, Klara observes the “outer world”, the street where the store is located and tries to learn about the humans around.
Once Klara shifts to Josie’s house, she discovers that Josie is suffering from an unknown illness which is hinted as the side-effect of the “lift”. The rest of the story is about how Klara helps her while also tries to save her by making a special pact with the Sun.
I found it interesting that Klara was so giving in nature, she was ready to give up a part of her if that meant Josie could survive and goes to great lengths to be of any help to Josie. Is it because she’s programmed to be “giving”?
Or is it because robots are simpler than humans? Though Klara had great intellectual prowess, I felt her emotions were far simpler. She could feel grief, anxiety and happiness, but all of these were related to Josie and the people who Klara thought were important to Josie.
At the same time, 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.
With the humans in the story, we encounter various situations that question their morality. Josie’s mother struggles to cope with her(Josie’s) illness. She lost a daughter to the process of lifting already, but she still decided to go for the process for her second child. Though she says, she had to give her daughter the best opportunities that were available, did she really have the right to endanger Josie’s life?
Josie’s mother also prepares for the worst by developing a life-like structure of Josie for Klara to impersonate so that Josie can “continue”. It brings to mind the question — can we really replicate humans with technological advancement? Isn’t there something so fundamentally unique to a person that makes them irreplaceable? The author ponders about this by comparing the human heart with many rooms, each time you think you opened one, you discover that there are so many others.
At times I felt the pace to be quite slow, which was perhaps required to paint the world anew through Klara’s eyes, that see things in boxes. Overall, Klara and the Sun was an interested read of the world from the limited understanding of a robot.
Who could enjoy this book?
Anyone interested in scientific fiction would love this book, although it’s focus isn’t much on the details of the technology as much as the characters in it. Also, this book is sort of an outsider’s perspective of humans, so anyone who enjoys such books will surely appreciate this one.
Also by Kazuo Ishiguro — Remains of the Day, Buried Giant, Never Let Me Go
