Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro

 

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is a book that was on my radar as an effort to read more international authors.

Started: 6/25/2021
Completed: 6/29/2021
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: The New Republic

Review:

This is an odd tale told from the distorted perspective of an artificially intelligent robot.  Not unlike The Handmaid's Tale, there is much more unsaid than said.  The book sort of assumes an awareness of the world that the AI neither has nor seems to pursue.  The use of off-putting phrases like "the mother" or "give privacy" and the use of third person when the AI is talking with individuals sometimes but not others is very distracting.  In addition, viewing the world from the AI perception (which uses interesting approaches for a computer programmer, but I wonder about everyone else)  is highly distorting and takes away from the flow of the story.  Finally, the lack of an overall narrative (this just seems like a series of events from a person's life) to combine all the pieces into a coherent whole might be appropriate for an AI which can't make those kinds of conjectures, but is disorienting to the reader.