Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun
Historically, I’ve been a big Ishiguro fan (though admittedly I could not get into and never finished the novel preceding this one). And also historically, I L O V E love stories about sentient AIs (this book is about an Artificial Friend purchased by an ill fourteen year old girl). But this book left me cold and also bummed me out. It’s like a retread of Never Let Me Go, but the narrator is hopelessly naive and never grows or evolves. (Which is weird, because everyone keeps talking about how amazing and observant she is.) There are hints of an interesting/dystopian near-future society, but the narrator is not interested in these things and so we don’t learn about them. Also, all the people in this book are BIZARRE. Like if your neighbor's (or kid's) robot friend wants to do something strange because it will somehow help her charge, you aren’t going to ask any follow-up questions? (And that is not getting into spoilery territory.) Maybe there is some deep symbolism I’m just not getting, but I don’t know what the point of this book was, at all, except to depress its readers. I mean, some real Giving Tree vibes. B/B-.
__
A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment