Just read Klara and the Sun

[MsAmerica]

I was not expecting something so pervasively sad.

Glad to have this to read afterward about Ishiguro:

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/08/kazuo-ishiguro-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-reveal-the-limits-of-our-own?irclickid=X5823OxvjxyIWIE26oVjEx7CUkBQf-zwES9MSs0&irgwc=1&source=affiliate_impactpmx_12f6tote_desktop_Bing%20Rebates%20by%20Microsoft&utm_source=impact-affiliate&utm_medium=2003851&utm_campaign=impact&utm_content=Logo&utm_brand=tny

Do you think it's significant that the hostile accented housekeeper is named Melania?

I’ve just finished it too. I loved it.
It has all the qualities I want and expect from an Ishiguro novel. It’s thoughtful, intriguing, mysterious and full of heart. Also just such a good read. It only took me a couple of days to finish it.
He sets up the characters and situation so deftly in just a couple of pages. I was grabbed from the get go. I loved Klara.
I think it would make a great book for discussion as it covers so many themes.
I liked Melania too. Interesting article, thanks for posting.
I’ve nearly finished reading the Booker long list for this year and I think this should have made the shortlist.

All of his books are sad! Or maybe sad isn't quite the right word, maybe poignant, or affecting.

I enjoyed the book although would put it some way down on my list of favourite books by this author, which would begin with Remains of the Day and The Unconsoled. It had some of the same sorts of logical flaws that bothered me when I read Never Let me Go, his other sci-fi inspired work. Without getting into spoilers, I didn't feel the purpose of the robot companions was convincingly established, and I was also bothered by the mechanics of the children being 'lifted'. But that may be because I'm a scientist and need science fiction to make scientific sense - I'm not sure that sort of accuracy is what Ishiguro is aiming for, and probably most readers either!

But, Ice and Indigo, people are already using robotic options as companions right now!

I've only read one other Ishiguro, but as I was reminded of the movie of Remains of the Day - yes, I was figuring that maybe everything from him would be sad at the core.

Yeah, I meant that I didn't find the robotic companions convincing in the specific context of the book, rather than being sceptical of the concept in general. I just wasn't really convinced by the relationship between Klara and Josie.

@IceandIndigo

Yeah, I meant that I didn't find the robotic companions convincing in the specific context of the book, rather than being sceptical of the concept in general. I just wasn't really convinced by the relationship between Klara and Josie.

Well, I think all relationships with AI are peculiar, including people talking to things like Alexa and Siri.

I only like to talk to inanimate objects that don't talk back, like yelling at the television.

I think it would have made a great short story, but was a bit thin stretched to novel length. And I agree things like the role of Klara and the lifting were rather sketched in.
I wasn’t at all convinced of Klara’s fixation on the sun, which is a pity seeing as it’s one of the main thrusts of the book!

@IntermittentParps

I think it would have made a great short story, but was a bit thin stretched to novel length. And I agree things like the role of Klara and the lifting were rather sketched in. I wasn’t at all convinced of Klara’s fixation on the sun, which is a pity seeing as it’s one of the main thrusts of the book!

Very astute! I agree. I think I might have been more impressed by the short story version.

I read Klara and the Sun in the summer. I’m not sure I ever really understood the concept of ‘lifting’.

For me, this was classic Ishiguro; thought provoking from start to finish and totally unforgettable. I first came across him while I was at uni and was set Never Let Me Go, I’ve been making my way through his work ever since. I have a copy of Nocturnes on my to read shelf, I think I will start it in the new year!

As a huge Ishiguro fan, and I mean colossal, I found it rather disappointing. Quite a tired rehash of the same book he always writes, with less beauty and less originality. People were writing stories from the point of view of robots in the 50s and 60s which packed more emotional punch.

I think lifting was supposed to refer to a type of gene editing, which was done with the intention to confer superior intelligence but had unpredictable side effects. Which… if you were going to do gene editing for that purpose (which is quite rightly illegal) it would make a lot more sense to do it at the embryo stage.

@PlanktonsComputerWife

As a huge Ishiguro fan, and I mean colossal, I found it rather disappointing. Quite a tired rehash of the same book he always writes, with less beauty and less originality. People were writing stories from the point of view of robots in the 50s and 60s which packed more emotional punch.

That reminds me of that being said about John Irving, the re-hashing.

I haven't decided if being stuck in the same subject really matters if it's always done well.

@IceandIndigo, I felt that it was left so vague that it ultimately didn't much matter.

I was disappointed by this book. It just didn’t hang together for me. Why does Klara, who is supposedly intelligent enough to understand emotions etc, refer to others in the third person? Why wouldn’t the AFs be able to use basic grammar?

There were nice elements to it, but I don’t think it really DID make any great commentary on what it means to be human.

I also never got what the Cootings machine was!

It's fine to write the same book again and again. An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day are the same novel, but both are beautifully written. I just felt Klara was taking his "detached and removed from reality narrator who doesn't see himself as ithers see him" device a step too far. Her stupidity really riled me. Kathy D was pathetically resigned to her fate but not stupid, the old couple in The Buried Giant were ignorant but not stupid. But a robot, apparently capable of tutoring young genetically-enhanced whizz kids in STEM subjects, who doesn't know what the sun is? It was utterly ridiculous.

I wish Vikram Seth would finish A Suitable Girl. I have rather got the hump with Kazuo and want to pettily wrench my Favourite Living Writer crown back from him now. But I know I'll have the next novel on pre-order...