Paperback, 303 pages
English language
Published Dec. 31, 2020 by Vintage.
I happened to also be reading a Yuval Harari book where he observes that robots and AI in fiction are often just stand-ins for human characters, and that is definitely the case here. Klara's being "artificial" serves to point out ways that people may or may not be artificial, and allows some fresh perspectives on other human characters. It works if you can accept the starting point.
Content warning death, toxic relationships, fascism, white supremacy, general creepiness
I'm trying to figure out how to explain the premise.
The narrator is an "Artificial Friend" a robot made to accompany a child until they move out of their house.
Klara and other AFs are solar-powered, and have superstitions about the Sun being this healing force. they're also pretty anti-pollution.
The story is slow-moving, and I will tell you do NOT skim or get distracted. Kazuo Ishiguro can have some massive paragraphs, skillfully made that make your eyes glaze over if it's a bad time, but it's essential information (though not an info dump). Every time my eyes started skimming, I had to go back and reread because I missed something both subtle and vital.
they keep talking about "lifted children" in the book. It's about genetics (uh oh!). It's not clear to me whether it's like that movie Gattaca where you just make the child artificially with the best DNA possible, or if it's like, Gene Editing.
Anyway, like Gattaca, there is genetic discrimination and that's a big thing in the book.
Just in case it wasn't clear: Kazuo Ishiguro is pretty clear that this is a bad thing.
There's a lot of talk about whether or not AFs can replace humans completely.
It's a nice book, very quiet for the most part. I recommend it.
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