The first time I read Klara and the sun (2021), I was still working on a project on artificial intelligence (AI). I picked up the novel again after reading [b:Never Let Me Go|56252373|Never Let Me Go|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1607717995l/56252373.SY75.jpg|1499998] (2005), which touches upon the same theme in a different way. It struck me that Kazuo Ishiguro is more of a science fiction writer than I realised.

The story begins in a shop for artificial friends – a combination of robotics and AI designed to assist humans – where Klara stands out as curious and observant. Such traits apparently do not apply to all robots, but come in handy when Klara eventually ends up with Josie and ‘the Mother’. Josie has a strange illness as a result of her ‘lifting’: in order to upgrade people, children from wealthier families are genetically edited to become smarter. The inevitable gap between the haves and the have-nots becomes visible in Josie’s friendship with her neighbour Rick, who threatens to lag behind in the school system.

Ishiguro excels at writing through the eyes of others, in this case children and algorithms. When Klara first enters her new house, for example, she perceives the living room as a ‘network’ of rectangles and objects. Unfortunately, Ishiguro is not consistent in this regard. Due to his humanoid approach to AI, modelling robots after organic beings, he tends to mix up artificial and human intelligence. Klara can be ignorant and constraint, or show a high level of self-efficacy and moral insight; her cognitive and emotional intelligence fluctuate.

Overall, I liked the interaction between humans and robots best. Ishiguro raises questions about human uniqueness and the possibilities of technology. Towards the end, I found the novel less and less interesting. The side-line story about Klara’s obsession with the sun was too far-fetched. (Why did it remind me of [b:Chanson douce|38642304|Chanson douce|Leïla Slimani|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519118237l/38642304.SY75.jpg|52236126]?) I could also have done with less antipathetic mothers.