Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro follows Klara, an android who dreams about being able to see the sun. She is an AF, or artificial friend, stuck in a department store, available for purchase but continuously waiting for that moment. One day, she is taken home by Josie, a sick child, and becomes both her companion and her caretaker. As she becomes involved in Josie’s life, Klara begins to develop perceptions of the world around, outside of the limited worldview she is programmed with.
This is a novel about consciousness and humanity through the eyes of an outsider. The novel is told through Klara’s point of view, which is possibly the most interesting factor of the story. We are witnessing the plot of the story unfold through the mind and consciousness of an android who is unexposed to the real world until she is adopted by Josie. Klara, as an AF, does not participate in human events until she meets Josie, so we see everything through her naive and innocent eyes. Things that may be obvious to us human readers may not be the same for the perspective we are reading, and it makes the story even richer.
Klara and the Sun takes place in a dystopian future society where androids are purchased to be companions, supervisors, friends, caretakers, etc. The main issue surrounding the characters is the idea of time and change. New advancements in technology result in newer models, which is an issue considering that Klara is an older model with the chances of being taken home diminishing each day. Her relationship with Josie is a close one because of how unlikely she would have been able to leave the store if Josie had never chosen her.
This is a very timely story, suggesting humanity and consciousness within an android in a time when we face overwhelming advancements in technology. It considers how something artificial might assume a human mind, and whether it would become capable of feeling and thinking the same way that humans do. You try to answer this question with Klara, witnessing her feel empathy and sadness and want, but because you are experiencing this through her eyes, everything is unreliable, which personally makes it more intriguing.
The novel is admittedly slow, at least in the first half. While it did not bother me, it was noticeable. There is a plot that unfolds that is too nuanced for Klara to understand at the beginning of her tenure as Josie’s caretaker, so the audience needs to sit with Klara while she tries to piece together what she is missing from the story. I think the philosophical nature of the book is successful and creates an interesting paradox when considering the human characteristics of a robot. The book seems to question how human an android can be, and whether that humanity is merely an imitation of what they are seeing from the world around them or a natural creation of their own consciousness. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in attempting to answer this hypothetical question for themselves and is curious about the developing psyche of an android with dreams.
