Book Club Monday: Klara and the Sun

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro Title: Klara and the Sun Publisher: Alfred A Knopf Date Published: 03/02/2021

Read Dates: 05/01/2026- 05/05/2026
Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was my library book club pick for May.

Klara and the Sun is a single POV dystopian science fiction set in an unspecified part of a futuristic US. It is told from the perspective of Klara, an Artificial Friend with a gift for observation, who watches and questions the world from within a store, until she is chosen by a young teen named Josie and sent to live in her country home. Klara has to adapt to her new surroundings and finds that, for all her observational skills, she might still be naive and out of place in her new surroundings. She watches Josie and her loved ones carefully, trying to figure out what makes them tick and what her role in this society is.

I enjoyed this, but I’ll admit it often left me confused. I had some guesses about how the story would unfold, and some of my speculations were answered while other things were left vague. I definitely wanted more information, more detail on what being “lifted” entailed, for example, or on the new class divisions. But in some ways, it’s interesting to be left wanting more.

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, 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, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?