Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Why does everyone just accept everything the AI says?

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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So this book was an impulse buy. I saw the hardback at Waterstones with £3 off and it was just so pretty. Plus, Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature and I’d never read anything by him before, so had to have it. It was on my “near future” TBR until I read andtheIToldYouSos’s lovely review, which catapulted it straight to my “next read” slot. 🙂 Let me start a quick summary of the book: Klara is an AF, or Artificial Friend, who are sun-powered […]

Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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I want to preface this review with a little slice of my reality as I believe it impacted my reading of this wonderful novel. My beloved Aunt Kitty is, at this very moment, in the last hours of her life as she dies very slowly from metastatic cervical cancer. This remarkable human being that I love like a mother was in my mind and heart as I meandered through the meticulously built world of Klara. What would I do for the person I loved the […]

quiet duty, questionable faith, and children taking on the burdens of their parents

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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I’d remembered of course that I should be grateful as always, but hadn’t been able to keep the disappointment from my mind. Kazuo Ishiguro, the master of suffering with dignity, is back with another literary gut-punch. There is no one else who handles quietly doomed duty quite like him. Klara is alive, but not entirely. She is an AF: a robotic companion for disconnected children. She lives in a shop window where she strives to please the Manager. She hopes to bask in the nourishing […]

“There’s always the sun. Always, always, always the sun.”

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Klara and the Sun  is the strange, sweet, and highly enjoyable new book by Nobel Prize-winning British writer Kazuo Ishiguro.  This odd fantasy world is typical of what to expect from Ishiguro.  The story takes place in a dystopian future where AF (Artificial Friend) robots are purchased as companions for children.  The story is narrated by Klara who is an AF.  Having the story told from a robot’s point of view may seem odd, but you grow to love Klara as she innocently tries to […]

Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro (2021)

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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A first person narrative from an AI built into a robot/android body that has been built as a line of “Artificial Friends” for kids. When Klara begins her story, she’s on display in the a specialty store mostly just trying to get noticed and also get some sun, which she slightly worships as a kind of deity-like presence, but also is her source of energy (as it ours as well). The novel then opens up a little when she meets Josie, a repeat visitor to […]

Klara, go off to a beach and get some sun

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Two stars is “I think it was ok” but in the realm of reviews, which have somehow normalized a three to be normal and two to be HAZARD AHEAD (and one star, obviously, bad in a way that is worthy of extreme note) this seems harsh to be rated as two stars even though at the end of the day it is, simply, ok. I really liked Never Let Me Go where I didn’t know the ending but did know the twist (aka I knew that all […]



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