It’s been six years since the release of Ishiguro’s previous novel, The Buried Giant. The waiting has been worth it. In another superb offering of speculative fiction, Ishiguro treats us to a story of love, familial devotion and sacrifice, while posing difficult ethical and philosophical questions.
Klara is our narrator. She’s an AF (although this is never detailed, it is assumed that this stands for Artificial Friend). She could be defined as an android, but this fails to detail Klara’s gifts. She’s insightful and continues learning as she sees more of the world. She’s chosen by a young teenager, Josie, whose fragility signals an illness which Klara aims to help. The narrative centres on Josie’s health, her relationships with Klara, her mother and estranged father, and with neighbour and lifelong friend, Rick. Behind the scenes, another man is working on a very different type of portrait of Josie.
This imagined world is America, sometime in the future, where children are given the opportunity to be ‘lifted’ – gaining greater cognitive ability through genetic editing. Only then do they have the competitive advantage to be assured of admission to university. Josie has undergone this process, but her failing health (perhaps caused by the same editing process) endangers not just her education prospects, but also her life.
Each lifted child’s secondary education is spent with online tutors. The only time spent with other children is at ‘interaction meetings’, designed to accustom children to others of the same age before they each leave home. Being alone for most of the time has necessitated the introduction of AFs like Klara.
Klara is nourished by the solar power of the (personified) Sun. She also rejoices as the Sun’s patterns fall over other characters. She’s attentive to Josie’s needs and her belief in the Sun’s regenerative power sees her plead with him as he sets, in an attempt to heal Josie.
Rick hasn’t been lifted and remains unable to access college education. He and Josie share a tight bond, which is extended to include Klara. The mother wants Josie to have the advantages other children enjoy, but also has a Plan B should this fail.
Ishiguro’s use of Klara as our eyes into this brave new world is a masterstroke. We might have some preconceived ideas of what this type of world might look like, but we learn its ‘rules’ as Klara learns them. She is naïve to begin with but is blessed with insight. She is a type of self-adaptive artificial intelligence (this description reduces her to a machine – something Ishiguro’s characterisation of her does not). This is a digital, algorithmic world where people don’t ‘guess’, they give ‘estimates’.
As the novel progresses, with Klara’s insight and Josie’s failing health, Ishiguro lets us chew over several ethical dilemmas. How much would we be willing to sacrifice to save a loved one? Is Klara just a machine?, more than a machine?, or for all intents and purposes a different species of human?
Philosophically, we are asked to question what ‘existence’ might be. Klara is the embodiment of the question as to whether artificial intelligence could adequately replace a person. Would you treat a kind, caring artificial intelligence as though it were human? Klara enjoys an astute mind, but is this enough? Does she possess an emotional heart? A soul? Is this even possible? Ishiguro makes us question ourselves, too. Are we so different? Superior? Inferior? Threatened?
This novel is timely and profound and is delivered with the grace and poise of a master. Unarguably brilliant.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
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