Kazuo Ishiguro_26
Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the Booker Prize, and was knighted for services to literature. 'Never Let Me Go' was a beautiful book; the kind you remember forever. OK then. So I bought 'Klara and the Sun' in hardcopy, new, as soon as it was released. The narrator, Klara, is a robot—an Artificial Friend—brought home from the store as a companion to Josie. Josie has been 'lifted'—some kind of enhancement available to the rich—but she's ill. Klara is variously furniture, an appliance, security, a person. She's self-aware, curious, acutely observational, and a believer; solar powered, she believes in the Sun. Ishiguro's robot-voiced mysticism is creepy and cloying and I did not like this book. But, damn it, I'll remember it.