Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
This was a refreshing change for me, as my own book diet is almost entirely non-fiction, although I discovered that other members devour fiction like it's going out of fashion!
We started unpicking a few of the many layers in this book. Don’t be deceived by the lyrical language or its innocent tone—this one goes deep!
On its surface, the book explores the interaction between humans and a general artificial intelligence (Klara). But after the first half (which I found sickly sweet), sinister layers started to become apparent:
• How might access to genetic enhancement increase social divides, inequality, and exclusion? (The book was written soon after the Nobel prize was awarded for CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing techniques.)
• What is an acceptable human price to pay for opportunity?
• What are the implications of an entire childhood of remote learning? (It was written during the pandemic.)
• What characterises love beyond devotion and sacrifice?
For me, the most interesting part was in the way the internal states of the human characters played out in their behaviour towards and around Klara (the innocent and child-like robot protagonist). As a reader, you’re left inferring what’s really going on, using a robot’s observations and interpretations.
With a robot as the most empathic character in the book, it asks whether we're in danger of forgetting what it is that makes us human in the first place!........
