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Book Review: Klara and the Sun

April 06, 2026

I recently read Klara and the Sun, my third Ishiguro novel. Halfway through, my impatience got the better of me; I was ready to label this the worst Ishiguro novel I've ever read. But I eventually came around. While Klara lacks the nostalgic charm of Remains of the Day or the punch-in-the-gut reveal of Never Let Me Go, it nevertheless feels like an important statement about technology, science, faith, and technocracy.

If a book about an artificially intelligent android sounds tiresome when AI hype is slowly crushing all hope for humanity, fear not: this book is even better if you replace "Android Friend"/"AF" with "dog".

Characters

  • Klara: An Android Friend (AF), a solar-powered, bipedal, artificial intelligence. The (sometimes unreliable, childlike, but oddly inhuman) POV of the story. Klara is (supposedly) unusually clever and observant for an AF, but we don't get many AFs for comparison. Worships the Sun in a surprisingly literal sense; has multiple back-and-forth conversations with the Sun, actively believes that the Sun intervenes with 'special healing' for multiple characters throughout the book. I was initially confused when Klara remarks that 'the world was divided into boxes' during complicated scenes, or when she occasionally reduces a character or some other entity to a cone or box, but I eventually figured out that this is Ishiguro's attempt to convey Klara's computer vision to the reader: when the world becomes 'partitioned', I assume we are seeing Klara parallelizing processing of a scene because there's too much going on and she needs to split up her processing; when a person turns into a simpler shape, I assume we are seeing Klara manage memory consumption when something very complicated is taking up a lot of processing (or when she is damaged/inhibited later in the story). Klara rarely (or never?) uses pronouns, opting to always use names to refer to people, even when speaking directly to a person.

  • Josie: a teenage girl who lives alone with her mother out in the boonies. As is the social norm, Josie has been 'lifted' using genetic engineering to be smarter than your average child (though we see little hard evidence of this throughout the story). Unfortunately, due to side-effects of her genetic engineering, Josie is sickly, to the point where the likelihood of her survival drives much of the story.

  • Rick: Josie's childhood best friend and only neighbor in the boonies (he lives in the crappy house next door). Brilliant and kind, but ostracized by society because his mother opted not to 'lift' him with genetic engineering. He's really into drones and other discreet surveillance technology that are totally not an ethical minefield.

  • the Mother (Chrissie): Josie's mother. Divorced, lives alone in the boonies. Cold and career-oriented and sometimes cruel, likely at least partially because her first daughter, Sal, died as a result of complications rising from the same genetic engineering that Josie is currently suffering from (and that society heavily peer pressures parents into getting for their children, despite the risks).

  • the Father (Paul): Josie's father, an engineer who routinely insists that things are 'outside his area of expertise' but then goes right ahead and postulates opinions about them. Divorced, lives in some kind of post-employment compound in the city with a bunch of other rich white guys who feel the need to arm themselves against the nearby 'gangs'. Claims not to be a fascist (but who does?).

  • Helen: Rick's mother. Rick spends a lot of time worrying about and protecting her, but she seems mostly competent when she joins the story. She doesn't work or drive, which seriously complicates Rick's childhood and ability to do just about anything, living out in the boonies.

  • Rosa: An AF of a similar make and model to Klara, displayed and sold out of the same store.

  • Manager: The manager of the store that Klara spends the first bit of story in. Shows a glimmer of empathy for the AFs when she helps Klara not get bought by another child after Josie has already promised to buy Klara, and once more at the end of the story.

  • Vance: A real dick who used to fuck Helen, but then she ghosted him because he's a dick. Shows up briefly in the story because Helen tries to manipulate him into nepotisming Rick into college, but it turns out he's just salty about getting ghosted.

  • The Housekeeper (Melania): Cleans the house, distrusts AFs, does a fair bit of nannying for Josie.

Setting

A dystopian near-future that unfortunately feels very similar to our current world. Notable differences:

  • automation is destroying even high-level engineering positions (and the automation is actually capable of doing those jobs!)
  • android friends are a true sentient artificial intelligence -- despite what chatbot-peddling tech companies will tell you, we are a very very very very very very very very very very very long way from an introspective, sentient, empathetic machine. Many nontechnical readers will inevitably compare Klara to ChatGPT or Claude. I assure you that LLMs have neither a consistent worldview, an internal monologue, or anything else that makes them remotely similar to the anthropomorphic internal POV of Klara. LLMs produce statistically likely text that, combined with the smoke and mirrors of image processing and voice simulation, can sometimes seem like sentience to the untrained eye. They are not. Really. And if you are dumb enough to think than an LLM is sentient, you should really think for a minute about why you're OK with mass machine slavery, torture, and murder.
  • genetic engineering is capable of improving children (in some vague way that seems mostly related to intelligence and social ability) at some low risk of complications that can lead to death

Unfortunately, the little worldbuilding we get in Klara and the Sun doesn't flesh out most of these concepts -- but you don't read Ishiguro for hard science fiction explanations. He's all about the impact on humanity.

Plot

Klara's story begins in a shop window, where the Manager peddles her and other Android Friends using a variety of shop displays. Children come in, talk to an AF, grow attached, and guilt their parents into making a huge purchase. Much like Android Friends in general, the experience is somewhere between a mall pet store and an Apple store, where glass window displays lure children in, and knowledgeable parents worry about getting the best deal on the most modern technology.

Notably, in the shop, Klara learns about the world exclusively through the window, which looks out on a fairly typical walkable city street. People walk and jog past; taxis occasionally get in heated arguments; homeless people loiter in empty doorways; children gaze longingly into the window; sometimes nondescript public works results in a giant machine (with the name 'Cootings' on the side) spewing smoke right in front of the shop window for a week because they're resurfacing the street or working on underground utilities or something.

Eventually Josie's family buys Klara from the store and brings her home. The household is weird, but nice enough; Josie is sometimes sick; Chrissie is often a coldhearted jerk. But I'm sure plenty of AFs wind up in much worse homes.

Things escalate a bit when Josie first gets quite sick. Chrissie tries to boost her spirits by promising a visit to a waterfall that Josie loves, but when the family gets in the car to go to the waterfall, Chrissie declares Josie too sick to go. But instead of everyone staying home, Chrissie takes Klara to the waterfall, and even asks Klara to pretend to be Josie. We learn that Josie once had an older sister, Sal, who died of a similar sickness to what Josie has now.

Eventually we meet Rick and a collection of local-ish 'lifted' (genetically improved) children. All of the other kids are spoiled assholes, most of whom are totally OK with bullying Rick and endangering Klara.

Josie keeps getting sick. With Rick's help, Klara journeys out to a barn that the Sun sets behind, where she prays/worships/bargains with the Sun to cure Josie's illness. Klara becomes convinced that if she destroys the polluting Cooting machine she used to see outside the AF shop, the Sun will cure Josie. People keep asking Klara if Josie is going to die, and Klara keeps alluding to her hope that Josie will get better because of her (secret!) faith in the Sun. People seem to think that AFs are smarter than humans and thus conclude that Josie will not die because the artificial intelligence said so.

Eventually the entire gang of Chrissie, Josie, Helen, Rick, and Klara meet up with Paul in the city for the climax of the book. We learn that Chrissie has been bamboozled by a psychopath (Capaldi) into considering replacing Josie (if she dies) with Klara. Paul doesn't like this idea, but isn't nearly as repulsed by it as he should be. But to his credit, Klara discusses the idea of a soul with Paul, and neither he nor Klara believe that, if you observe a person for a long time, you can fully replace them with a computer. It all comes together with this excellent description of why you should hate tech bros:

I think I hate Capaldi because deep down I suspect he may be right. That what he claims is true. That science has now proved beyond doubt there's nothing so unique about my daughter, nothing our modern tools can't excavate, copy, transfer. That people have been living with one another all this time, centuries, loving and hating each other, and all on a mistaken premise. A kind of superstition we kept going while we didn't know better. That's how Capaldi sees it, and there's a part of me that fears he's right. Chrissie, on the other hand, isn't like me. She may not know it yet, but she'll never let herself be persuaded. If the moment ever comes, never mind how well you play your part, Klara, never mind how much she wishes it to work, Chrissie just won't be able to accept it. She's too...old-fashioned. Even if she knows she's going against the science and the math, she still won't be able to do it. She just won't stretch that far. But I'm different. I have...a kind of coldness in side me she lacks. Perhaps it's because I'm an expert engineer, as you put it. This is why I find it so hard to be civil around people like Capaldi. When they do what they do, say what they say, it feels like they're taking from me what I hold most precious in this life. Am I making sense?

Nobody tells Josie that Chrissie and her psychopath friend want to replace her if she dies like a faulty lightbulb.

Paul and Klara sabotage the Cootings machine with magic fluid that Paul takes out of Klara's head.

Helen and Rick meet up with Vance to try to nepotism Rick into college, but Vance sucks.

Everyone returns home, but Josie gets really sick. Everyone becomes convinced that she'll die. But Rick takes Klara to the magic barn one more time and she tells the Sun that because Rick and Josie love each other, the Sun should cure her with magic light. The next day, the Sun gets really bright for a hot second, and Klara stops the Housekeeper from shutting the shades on Josie. Josie finally gets better (because of the Sun's special nourishing, if you believe Klara and her faith).

Eventually Josie goes to college and Rick goes to wherever those dumb unlifted plebeians go and Klara goes to a dump that people aren't allowed to remove AFs from because of some implied ban on AFs. The manager from Klara's store finds Klara and asks her how her life went. Klara seems pleased.

Summary

This story would have been even better if, instead of an android, Klara was just a pet dog. You wouldn't even have to change the story much, since Klara so rarely speaks (and literally never speaks in a consequential way -- most people barely even listen to what she has to say). Even better, you'd avoid the entire minefield of anthropormorphizing artificial intelligence that has become tiresome, to say the least, in the past few years. Sure, AFs play into the dystopian world of people losing their jobs to automation, but it doesn't matter so much that we actually need to explicitly call out artificial intelligence.

There were aspects of this story that I really liked. I enjoyed Klara's mysterious faith in the Sun -- portrayals of religion in literature can feel tedious, but this felt original in a way that I haven't seen elsewhere. There are echoes of my favorite parts of Remains of the Day -- acceptance, and moving on after a part of your life has concluded. And the converse, Chrissie's struggle to accept her own role in potentially killing both of her daughters. It was fun to see Klara try to understand the world around her, from her glimpses of humanity in the shop window, to her first visit outside (and her laughable confusion about the 'loose stones' in the driveway for the car), to her love of 'kind, gentle' sheep, to her hatred of bulls, to the way she compartmentalized experiences in the crowd outside the theatre when everyone visits the city. And it's impossible to not like Rick, the guy who's so nice he carries a robot through a field so it can worship the Sun.

There were also aspects I didn't like. After a while, Klara's childlike minimal prose became tedious to read. The story is extremely slow. The dialogue is... not how humans speak, at all. It literally does not make any sense that Klara wouldn't understand that the Sun is a star, in the sky, that does not, in fact, set into some random guy's barn (especially since late in the book she helps tutor Rick with physics, math, and science).

Overall, a recommend (though I would recommend Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go first). But I'll say it again: Klara should have been a dog.