The incomparable Kazuo Ishiguro has once more tackled the theme of master and servant, this time using the broad genre of science fiction to explore the matter in "Klara and the Sun."
Playing with themes of light and shadow, the novel starts at a slow pace, but the final third of the book pulses with intensity. As an "artificial friend" is posed with the question of what it would mean to "continue" its human child owner, the AF shows itself capable of perhaps more human emotions and reasoning than humans themselves.
A simple examination of what it means for a robot to come to terms with the exhibition of complex emotions quickly gains complexity as "Klara and the Sun" becomes a satire of meritocracy, to borrow a phrase from The Atlantic.
"I'd never before seen anything that gave, all at once, so many signals of anger and the wish to destroy ... At that moment it felt to me some great error had been made that the creature should be allowed to stand in the Sun's pattern at all, that this bull belonged somewhere deep in the ground far within the mud and darkness, and its presence on the grass could only have awful consequences."
As the work races to a close, environmentalism, the caste system, and governmental conditions come under examination -- a fitting novel for the time of quasi-quarantine.
"'I do apologize, Paul,' Miss Helen said, 'for suggesting you and your new friends were fascists. I shouldn't have done so. It's just you did say you were all white people and all from the ranks of the former professional elites. You did say that. And that you were having to arm yourself quite extensively against other types. Which does all sound a little on the fascistic side ...'"
"Klara and the Sun" is occasionally undermined by its own flat prose, but the questions it raises and the very real pathos it explores makes the read both timely and fascinating.
"There's nothing there. Nothing inside Josie that's beyond the Klara of this world to continue."
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