Klara and the Sun

 I don’t think artists owes their audience anything. They write, paint, compose or photograph the world the way they see it and if the rest of us like that vision, good for them and happy for us.

So Kazuo Ishiguro writes a novel about a solar-powered android purchased as an Artificial Friend (AF) for a teenage girl with health problems. The girl lives with her divorced mother in the countryside and has friends who’ve all – bar one – been genetically modified for increased intelligence.

I think.

I say ‘I think’ because the entire novel is narrated by Klara, the AF, and is seen entirely through her eyes and with her perceptions. So her vision is digital, the Sun is an all-powerful saviour and the characters she interacts with exist at an objective remove from her own, artificially constructed, experience.

All of which results in a book that’s cool, dry and unemotional, and all of which makes perfect sense given the nature of the narrator. But it also makes for a very unengaging read. With every page I felt as though I were listening to a third party telling me the story of this book. I never felt as though I were part of its world, and could hear it and smell it and feel it. It kept me at a distance for its entire duration and didn't once make me care about any of the characters on any of the pages.

But it’s Kazuo Ishiguro’s particular vision of a world, and I can’t say he doesn’t carry it through all the way to end. So good for him. Just not so – this time – happy for me.