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Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro    {Reviewed by STELLA} We meet Klara at the store with her best friend Rosa. Soon it will be their turn to be in the window—the sweet spot for attracting attention—and, hopefully, purchased. Manager is very pleased with Klara and, while the week in the window doesn’t yield immediate success, the attention of teenager Josie is garnered. Klara is an AF (artificial friend)—a model with high sensitivity, great observation skills, a talent for mimicry, and superb computational skills. She probably has a perfect EQ score. When Josie and her mother return to the store some weeks later, Klara passes the questions and tests posed by the Mother, and is packed and ready to dispatch to her new home. This is a near-future America where the elites are scaling further ahead with their advantages of education and resources, where children are ‘lifted’—genetically improved—and where company for children can come in the form of an AF. The world is polluted cities, intensive farming, and social anxiety. Josie, like her peers, studies from home with her tutors streamed in (school is too dangerous), has few interactions outside the home (Mother, Melania Houskeeper and Klara are the household)—her childhood friend, Rick (not lifted), and the set social occasions with the other lifted teenagers to help them learn social engagement behaviours are the exceptions. But Josie is often unwell, and it’s Klara’s role to help her through these times—to keep her company and be her friend. Ishiguro’s eighth novel, Klara and the Sun is reminiscent of his wonderful Never Let Me Go (which was a cautionary tale about cloning), and is told solely from Klara’s viewpoint. Klara is highly intelligent, emotionally superior (especially when it comes to empathy), and curious (she questions what she sees and hears—something that may be an unexpected and possibly unwelcome consequence of her model), yet she is fetchingly naive and seemingly without endless knowledge. She’s not hardwired into the internet. She has to piece new experiences together—whether these are physical or emotional—but she can do this extremely well and quickly. We, the readers, may not be as fast as Klara, but we too have to gather the clues and piece together the actions of Josie, her mother, Rick, and the others we meet through Klara’s eyes, to make sense of this future world and the motivations of the players. Not surprisingly, the motivations are familiar—self-improvement and selfishness to retain privilege. As Josie’s illness worsens we discover that the process of 'lifting' can be fatally detrimental. Klara, with her sense of loyalty, love and responsibility, is convinced she can make a difference if she can communicate with the Sun (she is solar-powered), who she believes has special powers—to make a deal that may save Josie’s life. Kazuo Ishiguro will make you love Klara and question the depth of understanding and sensitivity in our humans, despite the real issues of loss and fear that are faced by Josie and her parents. Klara and the Sun is wonderfully narrated, compelling and stimulating. Who has the greater human heart in this tale of loyalty, love, fragility and uncertainty?