My dad has always been a fan of the writer Kazuo Ishiguro, and it happens that the two bear a passing resemblance: black graying hair, brows furrowed over thick glasses, a permanent look of concern around the eyes and mouth. Maybe that’s why reading Ishiguro sometimes feels, uncannily, like listening to my dad tell a story. Funnily enough, Ishiguro’s 2021 novel “Klara and the Sun” was based on a tale he made up for his daughter Naomi when she was small. And when he told a grown-up Naomi about his plans to use the premise for a children’s book, she said: “You can’t possibly give young children a story like that. They will be traumatized.”
“Klara and the Sun” is the subject of next month’s First Thursday Book Discussion on May 1. The story takes place in a familiar world: anxious and polluted; obsessed with upward mobility; technology outpacing humans’ philosophical boundaries about how it should be used. Klara the Artificial Friend (AF) is our narrator, designed to be a companion for children. She observes the world from a store window until she is chosen by Josie, a teenager with a painful, mysterious illness and fraught relationships with her mother, best friend Rick, and estranged father.
The people who love Josie are terrified of losing her, and this fear constricts their relationships with Josie and each other. Each character copes differently — the mother with science, Rick with confused avoidance, and Klara with absolute faith in the Sun. (Who can blame her? She’s solar-powered.) But Klara’s commitment to save Josie does not come from her own fear of loneliness; rather, she acts dutifully on the concerns of her human associates. Klara is immune to that essential human quality that lives inside the others. I asked my dad his favorite quote from the book: “Perhaps all humans are lonely. At least potentially.”
Have you ever watched someone you love fade away? What would you have sacrificed to save them?
What does it mean to be a good parent?
Can we use artificial intelligence to ease human loneliness? Should we?
“Klara and the Sun” raises these questions and more. Join us on Thursday, May 1 from 12 – 1 p.m. in the Children’s Program Room for a discussion about this children’s tale turned dystopian novel and to bear witness to Klara’s luminous story together. ☀️🛐
