<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<address class="css-c2jxua e6idgb70"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/books/review/klara-and-the-sun-kazuo-ishiguro.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/books/review/klara-and-the-sun-kazuo-ishiguro.html</a><br>
</address>
<p class="css-c2jxua e6idgb70">fiction</p>
<div class="css-1vkm6nb ehdk2mb0">
<h1 id="link-3f934c0e" class="css-139djpt e1h9rw200"
data-test-id="headline">A Humanoid Who Cares For Humans, From
the Mind of Kazuo Ishiguro</h1>
</div>
<article id="story" class="css-1vxca1d e1qksbhf0">
<div class="css-79elbk" data-testid="photoviewer-wrapper">
<div data-testid="photoviewer-children" class="css-1a48zt4
ehw59r15">
<figure class="sizeMedium layoutHorizontal css-11o5ym4"
aria-label="media" role="group">
<div class="css-bsn42l"><source media="(max-width: 599px)
and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 3),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3),(max-width: 599px)
and (min-resolution: 3dppx),(max-width: 599px) and
(min-resolution: 288dpi)"><source media="(max-width:
599px) and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(max-width:
599px) and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:
2),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution:
2dppx),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution: 192dpi)"><source
media="(max-width: 599px) and (min-device-pixel-ratio:
1),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1),(max-width: 599px)
and (min-resolution: 1dppx),(max-width: 599px) and
(min-resolution: 96dpi)"><img alt="" class="css-11cwn6f"
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/07/books/review/07Jones-COVER/07Jones-COVER-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale"
style="cursor: pointer;"></div>
<figcaption class="css-17ai7jg e18f7pbr0"><span
class="css-cnj6d5 e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi
e1tej78p0">Credit...</span><span><span>Thomas Danthony</span></span></span></figcaption></figure>
</div>
</div>
<header class="css-ky4dag e12qa4dv0">
<div class="css-170u9t6">
<div class="css-u7fh8e">
<p class="css-q8y8tp">When you purchase an independently
reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate
commission.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div data-testid="byline-timestamp" class="css-xt80pu eakwutd0">
<div class="css-18e8msd">
<div class="css-vp77d3 epjyd6m0">
<div class="css-1baulvz">
<p class="css-4z5zii e1jsehar1"><span
class="byline-prefix">By </span><span
class="css-1baulvz last-byline" itemprop="name">Radhika
Jones</span></p>
</div>
</div>
<ul class="css-1u1psjv epjyd6m3">
<li class="css-ccw2r3 epjyd6m1"><time
datetime="2021-03-01T11:51:29-05:00" class="css-ld3wwf
e16638kd2"><span class="css-1sbuyqj e16638kd3">Published
Feb. 23, 2021</span><span class="css-233int
e16638kd4">Updated March 1, 2021</span></time></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</header>
<section name="articleBody" class="meteredContent css-1r7ky0e">
<div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn">
<div class="css-53u6y8">
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0"><strong class="css-8qgvsz
ebyp5n10">KLARA AND THE SUN</strong><br>
By Kazuo Ishiguro</p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">About halfway through “Klara
and the Sun,” a woman meeting Klara for the first time
blurts out the kind of quiet-part-out-loud line we rely on
to get our bearings in a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. “One
never knows how to greet a guest like you,” she says.
“After all, are you a guest at all? Or do I treat you like
a vacuum cleaner?”</p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">This is Ishiguro’s eighth
novel, and Klara, who narrates it, is an Artificial
Friend, a humanoid machine — short dark hair; kind eyes;
distinguished by her powers of observation — who has come
to act as companion for 14-year-old Josie. Like that
childhood stalwart Corduroy, she’d been sitting in a
store, hoping to be chosen by the right child. AFs aren’t
tutors. They’re not babysitters (though they’re sometimes
chaperones), nor servants (though they’re expected to take
commands). They’re nominally friends, but not equals. “You
said you’d never get an AF,” Josie’s friend Rick says,
accusingly — which makes Klara the mark of some rite of
passage they didn’t want to accede to. Her ostensible
purpose is to help get Josie through the lonely and
difficult years until college. They are lonely because in
Josie’s world, most kids don’t go to school but study at
home using “oblongs.” They are difficult because Josie
suffers from an unspecified illness, about which her
mother projects unspecified guilt.</p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0"><img alt=""
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/07/books/review/Jones1/Jones1-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale"></p>
</div>
</div>
<br>
</section>
<div class="css-79elbk" data-testid="photoviewer-wrapper">
<div data-testid="photoviewer-children" class="css-1a48zt4
ehw59r15">
<figure class="css-18sc81u e1g7ppur0" aria-label="media"
role="group">
<div class="css-1xdhyk6 erfvjey0"><span class="css-1ly73wi
e1tej78p0">Image</span><source media="(max-width: 599px)
and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 3),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3),(max-width: 599px)
and (min-resolution: 3dppx),(max-width: 599px) and
(min-resolution: 288dpi)"><source media="(max-width:
599px) and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(max-width:
599px) and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:
2),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution:
2dppx),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution: 192dpi)"><source
media="(max-width: 599px) and (min-device-pixel-ratio:
1),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1),(max-width: 599px)
and (min-resolution: 1dppx),(max-width: 599px) and
(min-resolution: 96dpi)"><img alt="Kazuo Ishiguro, in
2015. For decades, memory and the accounting of memory,
its burdens and its reconciliation, have been his
subjects. With “Klara and the Sun,” he has mastered the
adjacent theme of obsolescence. What is it like to
inhabit a world whose mores and ideas have passed you
by?" class="css-1m50asq"
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/07/books/review/Jones1/Jones1-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale"
style="cursor: pointer;"></div>
<figcaption class="css-1l44abu ewdxa0s0"><span
aria-hidden="true" class="css-16f3y1r e13ogyst0">Kazuo
Ishiguro, in 2015. For decades, memory and the
accounting of memory, its burdens and its
reconciliation, have been his subjects. With “Klara and
the Sun,” he has mastered the adjacent theme of
obsolescence. What is it like to inhabit a world whose
mores and ideas have passed you by?</span><span
class="css-cnj6d5 e1z0qqy90"><span class="css-1ly73wi
e1tej78p0">Credit...</span><span>Andrew Testa</span></span></figcaption></figure>
</div>
</div>
<div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn">
<div class="css-53u6y8">
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">“Klara and the Sun” takes place
in the uncomfortably near future, and banal language is
redeployed with sinister portent. Elite workers have been
“substituted,” their labor now performed by A.I. Clothing
and houses are described as “high-rank.” Privileged children
are “lifted,” a process meant to optimize them for success.
Readers of Ishiguro’s 2005 novel “Never Let Me Go” will
viscerally recall the sense of foreboding all this awakens.
If I am being cagey about it, it’s to preserve that effect.
But for the inhabitants of the novel, the older generation
of whom remember the way things were, these conditions have
been normalized, to use the banal language of our own era.
Here is Josie’s father, a former engineer: “Honestly? I
think the substitutions were the best thing that happened to
me. … I really believe they helped me to distinguish what’s
important from what isn’t. And where I live now, there are
many fine people who feel exactly the same way.” Through
Klara, we pick up bits of overheard conversation: a mention
of “fascistic leanings” here; a reference to Josie’s
mysteriously departed sister there; the woman outside the
playhouse who protests Klara’s presence: “First they take
the jobs. Now they take the seats at the theater?”</p>
</div>
<aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column"></aside>
</div>
<div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn">
<div class="css-53u6y8">
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0"><em class="css-2fg4z9
e1gzwzxm0">[ “Klara and the Sun” was one of our most
anticipated books of March. </em><a class="css-1g7m0tk"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/books/march-2021-books.html"
title=""><em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0">See the full
list</em></a><em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0">. ]</em></p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">For four decades now, Ishiguro
has written eloquently about the balancing act of
remembering without succumbing irrevocably to the past.
Memory and the accounting of memory, its burdens and its
reconciliation, have been his subjects. With “Klara and the
Sun,” I began to see how he has mastered the adjacent theme
of obsolescence. What is it like to inhabit a world whose
mores and ideas have passed you by? What happens to the
people who must be cast aside in order for others to move
forward? The climax of “The Remains of the Day” (1989),
Ishiguro’s perfect, Booker Prize-winning novel, pivots on a
butler’s realization that his whole life has been wasted in
service of a Nazi sympathizer. (“I gave my best to Lord
Darlington. I gave him the very best I had to give and now —
well — I find I do not have a great deal more left to
give.”) A subplot in Ishiguro’s first novel, “A Pale View of
Hills” (1982), involves an older teacher in postwar Nagasaki
whose former student renounces his way of thinking. “I don’t
doubt you were sincere and hard working,” the former student
tells him. “I’ve never questioned that for one moment. But
it just so happens that your energies were spent in a
misguided direction, an evil direction.” In “Never Let Me
Go,” clones “complete” after fulfilling their biological
purpose. In “Klara and the Sun,” obsolescence reaches its
mass conclusion: Whole classes of workers have been replaced
by machines, which themselves are subject to replacement. It
nearly happens to Klara. In the story’s first section, a
new, improved model of AF arrives and bumps her to the back
of the store.</p>
<div class="css-16l7vy9" data-testid="inline-message"
aria-live="polite">
<div>
<ul>
<li>Thanks for reading The Times.</li>
</ul>
<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=9YLQH"
class="css-1h74mhy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer
noopener" data-testid="inline-message" role="button">Subscribe
to The Times</a></div>
</div>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0"><em class="css-2fg4z9
e1gzwzxm0">[ </em><a class="css-1g7m0tk"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/magazine/kazuo-ishiguro-klara.html"
title=""><em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0">Read the
Magazine’s profile of Ishiguro</em></a><em
class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0">. ]</em></p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">“Klara and the Sun” lands in a
pandemic world, in which vaccines hold the promise of
salvation but the reality of thousands of deaths a day
persists, and a substantial portion of the American
population deludes itself into thinking it isn’t happening.
Our own children have been learning on oblongs and in
isolation. The crisis of this novel revolves around whether
Josie, with Klara’s help, will recover from her illness —
and whether, if Josie doesn’t recover, her mother, with
Klara’s help, will survive the loss. It turns out that to
“lift” her daughter, to ensure Josie will thrive amid her
world’s “savage meritocracies” (I’m quoting from Ishiguro’s
<a class="css-1g7m0tk"
href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2017/ishiguro/25124-kazuo-ishiguro-nobel-lecture-2017/"
title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2017
Nobel lecture</a>, an enlightening document as to his
state of mind), her mother has knowingly risked Josie’s
health, her happiness, her very life — a calculation that
sounds terrible on paper until one realizes how common it
already is.</p>
</div>
<aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column">
<div id="c-col-editors-picks" class="css-j64t31">
<h2 class="css-ohexsw">Editors’ Picks</h2>
<article class="css-5raq8g"><a class="css-1sj6bre
gtm-tagged"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/science/math-crumple-fragmentation-andrejevic.html?action=click&algo=lda_agg_mean_hellinger&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=810181360&impression_id=4e635710-81e1-11eb-aabd-5b79e052f075&index=0&pgtype=Article®ion=ccolumn&req_id=338323187&surface=home-featured&variant=6_lda_agg_mean_hellinger&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending">
<div class="css-1rcvpgy"><img alt=""
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/09/science/05SCI-CRUMPLE7/05SCI-CRUMPLE7-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350"></div>
<h3 class="css-1p08cbr">The Latest Wrinkle in Crumple
Theory</h3>
</a></article>
<article class="css-5raq8g"><a class="css-1sj6bre
gtm-tagged"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/science/math-gresham-sarah-hart.html?action=click&algo=lda_agg_mean_hellinger&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=90284510&impression_id=4e635711-81e1-11eb-aabd-5b79e052f075&index=1&pgtype=Article®ion=ccolumn&req_id=338323187&surface=home-featured&variant=6_lda_agg_mean_hellinger&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending">
<div class="css-1rcvpgy"><img alt=""
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/09/science/06SCI-HART1/06SCI-HART1-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350"></div>
<h3 class="css-1p08cbr">Triangulating Math, Mozart and
‘Moby-Dick’</h3>
</a></article>
<article class="css-5raq8g"><a class="css-1sj6bre
gtm-tagged"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/world/europe/flying-ship-cornwall.html?action=click&algo=lda_agg_mean_hellinger&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=810513571&impression_id=4e635712-81e1-11eb-aabd-5b79e052f075&index=2&pgtype=Article®ion=ccolumn&req_id=338323187&surface=home-featured&variant=6_lda_agg_mean_hellinger&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending">
<div class="css-1rcvpgy"><img alt=""
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/06/world/06ship-mirage/06ship-mirage-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350"></div>
<h3 class="css-1p08cbr">A ‘Flying Ship,’ and the
Superior Mirage Behind It<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/books/review/klara-and-the-sun-kazuo-ishiguro.html?action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending#after-pp_edpick"
style="position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px;
margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px none; clip:
rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); overflow: hidden;"
class="gtm-tagged">ntinue reading the main story</a></h3>
</a></article>
</div>
</aside>
</div>
<div class="css-79elbk" data-testid="photoviewer-wrapper">
<div data-testid="photoviewer-children" class="css-fu0w18
ehw59r12" height="729.25px" width="480px">
<div data-testid="photoviewer-overlay" class="css-tux0zj
ehw59r13">
<div width="480px" height="729.25px" class="css-a4wfqx
ehw59r14">
<div style="visibility: hidden; transition: visibility 0s
ease 0.5s;">
<div class="css-8h527k">
<div data-testid="lazyimage-container" style="height:
auto;"><source media="(max-width: 599px) and
(min-device-pixel-ratio: 3),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 3dppx),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 288dpi)"><source
media="(max-width: 599px) and
(min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 2dppx),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 192dpi)"><source
media="(max-width: 599px) and
(min-device-pixel-ratio: 1),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 1dppx),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 96dpi)"><img alt=""
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/11/books/review/Jones2/Jones2-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale"></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section name="articleBody" class="meteredContent css-1r7ky0e">
<div class="css-79elbk" data-testid="photoviewer-wrapper">
<div data-testid="photoviewer-children" class="css-1a48zt4
ehw59r15">
<figure class="css-ujjex e1g7ppur0" aria-label="media"
role="group">
<div class="css-1xdhyk6 erfvjey0"><span class="css-1ly73wi
e1tej78p0">Image</span>
<div class="css-8h527k">
<div data-testid="lazyimage-container" style="height:
auto; cursor: pointer;"><source media="(max-width:
599px) and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 3),(max-width:
599px) and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:
3),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution:
3dppx),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution:
288dpi)"><source media="(max-width: 599px) and
(min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 2dppx),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 192dpi)"><source
media="(max-width: 599px) and
(min-device-pixel-ratio: 1),(max-width: 599px) and
(-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 1dppx),(max-width:
599px) and (min-resolution: 96dpi)"><img
class="css-1m50asq"
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/11/books/review/Jones2/Jones2-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale"></div>
</div>
</div>
<figcaption class="css-1l44abu ewdxa0s0"></figcaption></figure>
</div>
</div>
<div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn">
<div class="css-53u6y8">
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">Considering the place of
“Klara and the Sun” in Ishiguro’s collected works — which
cohere astoundingly well, even “The Unconsoled” (1995),
powered as it is by the dreamlike absorption and
reconciliation of unfamiliar circumstances — I found
myself thinking of Thomas Hardy, the way Hardy’s novels,
at the end of the 19th century, captured the growing
schism between the natural world and the industrialized
one, the unclean break that technology makes with the
past. Tess Durbeyfield earns her living as a dairymaid
before agricultural mechanization, but she channels early
strains of what Hardy presciently calls “the ache of
modernism.” She represents a mode of being human in nature
before machinery got in the way.</p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">Klara is a man-made marvel.
She lacks the fluidity of human mobility such that to
negotiate a gravel driveway is a project of careful
intention. But like the great outdoors, she runs on solar
power, and she ventures deliberately into the natural
world at critical points in the story, communing with the
sun to try to help Josie with matters bigger than either
one can comprehend. Klara’s perception, too, is at once
mechanical and deeply subjective. Fields of vision appear
in squares and panels, so that you can imagine (through
her eyes) pictures processed and bitmapped, resolving
themselves the way a high-definition image resolves on a
screen, but with a shifting focus that seems tied to her
interpretation of the events and environment around her.
Seeing the world from Klara’s point of view is to be
reminded constantly of what it looks like when mediated
through technology. That might have felt foreign a century
ago, but not anymore.</p>
</div>
<aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column"></aside>
</div>
<div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn">
<div class="css-53u6y8">
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">Klara is likable enough — as
she was manufactured to be — but it’s hard to empathize
with her on the page, which is maybe the point. The
stilted affect that so often characterizes Ishiguro’s
prose and dialogue — an incantatory flatness that belies
its revelatory ability — serves its literal function.
Klara’s machine-ness never recedes. Unlike most of
Ishiguro’s first-person narrators, however, she seems
incapable of deluding herself. Her technological essence
presents some childlike limitations of expression, but are
they more pronounced than the limits born of the human
desire to repress, or wallow, or come across better than
we are? “I believe I have many feelings,” Klara says. “The
more I observe, the more feelings become available to me.”
This statement had the peculiar effect, on me anyway, not
of persuading me of her humanness but of causing me to
consider whether humans acquire nameable feelings all that
differently from her description. Which is maybe also the
point.</p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0">In an interview with The
Paris Review in 2008, Ishiguro said he thought of “Never
Let Me Go” as <a class="css-1g7m0tk"
href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5829/the-art-of-fiction-no-196-kazuo-ishiguro"
title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">his
cheerful novel</a>. Never mind that it centers on a trio
of clones bred specifically to have their organs
harvested. “I wanted to show three people who were
essentially decent,” he said. Klara carries that quietly
heroic mantle. Look at the characters Ishiguro gives voice
to: not the human, but the clone; not the lord, but the
servant. “Klara and the Sun” complements his brilliant
vision, though it doesn’t reach the artistic heights of
his past achievements. No moment here touches my heart the
way Stevens does, reflecting on his losses in “The Remains
of the Day.” Still, when Klara says, “I have my memories
to go through and place in the right order,” it strikes
the quintessential Ishiguro chord. So what if a machine
says it? There’s no narrative instinct more essential, or
more human.</p>
</div>
<aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column"></aside>
</div>
</section>
<div class="bottom-of-article">
<div class="css-1yif149">
<p>Radhika Jones is the editor in chief of Vanity Fair and
holds a doctorate in English and comparative literature from
Columbia University.</p>
<p><strong>KLARA AND THE SUN<br>
</strong>By Kazuo Ishiguro<br>
303 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $28.</p>
</div>
</div>
</article>
</body>
</html>