Klara and the Sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro, Laura Vives, Mauricio Bach

No cover — Kazuo Ishiguro, Laura Vives, Mauricio Bach: Klara and the Sun (AudiobookFormat, Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group)

Audiobook

Published by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group.

ISBN:: 978-978-059-334-6
Goodreads:: 57293004

(5 reviews)

"Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.

Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

In its award citation in 2017, the Nobel committee described Ishiguro's books as "novels of great emotional force" and said he has "uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.""

15 editions

Tania reviewed Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Exploring love and loneliness through an AI

4 stars

An easy and enjoyable read despite some illogical parts. I like the idea of exploring such human concepts as love and loneliness through an artificially intelligent robot.

pixouls@bookwyrm.social reviewed Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Surprisingly underwhelming

3 stars

I listened to this as an audiobook, my first checked out from Libby.
I liked the narrator's voice and felt it was generally quite well to meet the range of voices for the characters.
The book took too long to build up and the ending was too abstract and fell apart.
I also generally didn't like or understand why the characters were selected with the traits they had.
Some of the dialogue felt well played, while others felt jarring
In the end, my favorite part is Klara's relationship with the sun, which goes for the most part unexplored with other characters. This book has vague environmentalist themes.
many of the tropes that show up in this book I feel, have been better expressed in other works I've read.
I think this book would be fine for a middle schooler as it goes generally without much complexity with its readability. Though …

I listened to this as an audiobook, my first checked out from Libby.
I liked the narrator's voice and felt it was generally quite well to meet the range of voices for the characters.
The book took too long to build up and the ending was too abstract and fell apart.
I also generally didn't like or understand why the characters were selected with the traits they had.
Some of the dialogue felt well played, while others felt jarring
In the end, my favorite part is Klara's relationship with the sun, which goes for the most part unexplored with other characters. This book has vague environmentalist themes.
many of the tropes that show up in this book I feel, have been better expressed in other works I've read.
I think this book would be fine for a middle schooler as it goes generally without much complexity with its readability. Though I do think it should be followed with journaling or a book discussion. I would be curious how this book could be used to engage youth about AI ethics.

finktank reviewed Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro is a modern master

5 stars

I love everything I've ever read by Kazuo Ishiguro. His prose isn't filled with vocab words and doesn't ever even feel anything but mundane, and yet somehow, every single line is poetry. This book did not disappoint. Lovely, loving, heart-rending... and also exploring the very real potential futures of artificial intelligence, machine learning, friendship, and disposability.

peoplelikedogs reviewed Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

-

3 stars

Read this mostly as a bedtime read, which it was good for - pretty easy and not too creepy (although slightly unsettling at times). It nodded to a few things that piqued my interest (AI, eco-sabotage, transhumanism?) But didn't really flesh out any of them, they were mostly just a vibe/backdrop for the story of the characters, which was fine. Ive really enjoyed some books that explore human-robot interactions - marge piercey's body of glass comes to mind - but this didn't quite do it for me in terms of making my brain stretch around those questions of how we relate to machines. Which I don't think was the point of the book, I think the point was to build the world up from the perceptions of the narrator (an android) and that part was done quite well.

Overall a totally fine read and well-written but just didn't scratch anything …

Overall a totally fine read and well-written but just didn't scratch anything super interesting in my brain.

Nicholas Boyd Isacsson

rated it

Dec. 8, 2021

Subjects

Fiction, science fiction, general
speculative fiction
nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2021-03-21
New York Times bestseller
Fiction, dystopian
British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author)