Kazuo Ishiguro

Perhaps you don't need to. I mean, a lot of Jews accepted their fate under the Nazis and just kind of went along with it. One could argue that people's lives are being directed and manipulated towards their own accelerated destruction everywhere, every day, and they just go along with it.
It's not so much the fact that they didn't do anything that bothered me. It's that they didn't even talk about doing anything. That would have seemed more realistic to me, I think.

Why the hell don't they disappear into society? Because they can't. Maybe they look different, we don't know. But they certainly behave differently. They don't know how shops operate, or ordinary relationships, or what jobs are even out there, never mind what they themselves could do. And they are also pampered and privileged and sheltered for a long time before they start their 'donations', by which time it's too late.
They remind me of the rabbits in Watership Down who lived in the lovely warren and were sleek and well-fed and had invented an elaborate belief system for themselves and did not run away from the snare, because that was the trade off.
Hmm, I might just be talking myself round to liking this book a little bit more than I did before. Thanks, ILB.

Largely because they seem to only see each other, and other donors. The one job they are allowed to do is that of carer for other donors, before they become donors themselves. And when they talk about jobs in offices, they don't really know what they entail.

It is true that they go into shops, yes. But I've just got this overall picture of them as essentially helpless and coddled, but in a bad way.

some more unconnected thoughts:

"What I'm saying" I went on "is that when we were that age, when we were eleven, say, we weren't really interested in poems at all. But remember someone like Christy? Christy had this great reputation for poetry and we all looked up to her for it. Even you, Ruth, you didn't dare boss Christy around..."

Ishiguro doesn't have a knack for naming his characters: Kath, Ruth, Christy, Miss Emily, Miss Lucy; the names just fall like stones. theres something about the names that renders the characters not just fictional but unbelievable. theres a reason ishiguro says "remember someone like Christy" rather than "remember Christy" in the above quote: that Ishiguro no more believes that this character exists than we do.

/

We'd been in the middle of what we came to call 'The Tokens Controversy' Tommy and I discussed The Tokens Controvery a few years ago and we couldn't at first agree when it had happened

oh did you really? sorry i don't believe you called it 'The Tokens Controversy', not a bit. it's just trash writing.

/

There's another unbelievable scene later on where Kath attempts to communicate Ruth's tendency to lie:

I was lying on a pieve of old tarpaulin reading... Daniel Deronda, when Ruth came wandering over and sat down beside me. She looked at the cover of my book and nodded to herself. The after about a minute, just as i knew she would, she began to outline to me the plot of Daniel Deronda

the point of the scene being that ruth is faking it by pretending to have read Daniel Deronda and does this by summerising the plot. i just don't belive this scene. I have no idea why ishiguro chose DD here (maybe it has some resonance) but it seems ludicrous to me that someone could summarise the plot without having read it. maybe Ruth saw the recent BBC adaptation, i dunno.

oh but she couldn't have because the book is set in "England, Late 1990's" according to the first page. i'm not quite sure how this can be since the book is set over about a 20 year period but forget about that (Ishiguro did).

/

then there's the scene whereby, as a kind of reunion, the three main characters drive out to see a boat that has run aground on some marshland. i'm not exactly sure what this scene is about - what is this land locked ship's hull supposed to mean? - but it's for damn sure supposed to mean something because it's been shoehorned in there like someone who learned how to write by studying cliffs notes for popular school novels. i'm sure this scene is hugely significant but it's lost on me. by the same token the book ends on a typicaly transparent epiphany, the type you learn to write in 6th form creative writing class. girl drives out in flat landscape and get out of car, overwhelmed by grief, at a place where the detrietus of the area has somehow collected: she sees that it somehow resembles the detreitus of her life before she briefly hallucinates a vision of her lost lover (they didn't seem to like each other much anyway, IMO) and then drives off into the future and towards her own fate (death by organ donation!).

the scene where Kath is dancing to the song she loves, the song that gives the novel its title. Ishiguro almost writes quite a touching scene here but he lets it down due to cackhandedness. Kath is obsessed with this one song "never let me go" which she plays over and over again. i get the dea that the song is supposed to be generic, in some sense, but the thing that lets the scene down in that the best ishiguro can do for a lyric for the song is

"never let me go...
oh baby baby...
never let me go"

ok dude, i get that the song is called "Never Let Me Go" but so is your novel - don't you think you could have come up with some thing slightly more interesting than that for what is, ostensibly, the central scene in in your book? "never let me go... oh baby baby... never let me go" just doesn't convince me, it's weak. Ishiguro makes the crucial mistake of telling you what the scene is about rather than communicating the idea through the writing. it absolutely lacks subtlety.

Some of the stuff people complain about, Ishiguro could have explained easily if he'd wanted to. An explanation of why they can't run away could have been handled in a sentence (microchip, tattoo on back, whatever) but I think it didn't figure bcz these particular people never considered it a possibility.

The ship was the most baffling part, not only is it bizarre that a beached ship is apparently famous throughout the whole country (at least among donors) but then there's no path to it or anyone else there. And what does it mean? No explanation I can think of is not LAME.

Links to lots of reviews here:
http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/ishigurokazuo/neverletmego

surely one point of writing science fiction or (alternative society fiction) would be to change one major thing about a society and then consider how the rest of said society might change as a result of this massive change? Ishiguro opts out by having the rest of the society, what we see of it, virtually unchanged. how would a britain that has farmed human organ donors differ from britain as we know it now? sadly Ishiguro can't be bothered thinking about this.

It's a wrongheaded criticism that could just as well be levelled at any number of non-realist writers (why didn't Kafka consider how the rest of society might change in a world where people can turn into bugs?). How the rest of the world may or may not have changed is quite simply not the subject of the novel. The subject is the fate of the clones. In any case, we know very little about how the rest of the world may or may not have changed. We see everything through Kathy's eyes, and she has very little to say about the rest of the world. There's a scene where they go to Norfolk, and we learn that people work in offices, there are art galleries, and a few other things. We're simply not told much about the rest of the world. Actually, my sense from the novel is that not much is different, and that makes the novel more poignant, not less. We already know that our society is well capable of such indifference.

plot hole number 2, as i see it, is that after being surveilled 24 hours a day (to the point where Kath and Tommy find it difficult to meet up somewhere on the grounds of the school where they can talk in private) they are sent away, at school leaving age, to live on communes with absolutely no security at all. can someone explain to me exactly what, in their situations, changes in order to allow these characters almost total freedom after being locked up for all of their formative years? and why doesn't it change the characters outlooks except in the most superficial ways? why doen't it make them realise that they could dissappear without question? and crucially, what is it that makes them acquiesce at some stage with tyhe whole donor project by giving themselves up as donors, knowing what it will lead to?

Again, all this seems to me like a strength of the novel, not a weakness. The clones have entirely internalised their position in society. Just as we all have, just as we all "acquiesce" in the artificial social conventions which allow some people to be obscenely rich and others obscenely poor, for example. It's pretty easy to see parallels of the clones' attitude in our world. The vast bulk of slaves in ante-bellum America didn't all just "disappear", did they?

then there's the scene whereby, as a kind of reunion, the three main characters drive out to see a boat that has run aground on some marshland. i'm not exactly sure what this scene is about - what is this land locked ship's hull supposed to mean?

It's really not that hard to find metaphors in this scene is it?

BUT BUT BUT. this isn't the main reason the book is bad. it's bad because of the abolutely atrocious writing. line for line this is one of the most poorly written novels i've ever finished.

Well I don't think it's badly written. Sure, it's written a flat, affectless style, which works pretty well given the subject, the strangely flat lives these people lead.

If only it were true...

incidentally is "wrongheaded" a particularly fashionable word at the moment or have i just been reading it alot by concidence?

i simply don't agree with any of your other defences of the book either, sorry. basically i think that Ishiguro is a bad writer and a pretty unintelligent one.

If the book was about/engaged with that minority of donors (which it is easy to imagiune existing, should one want to) it would be a different book about a different subject, and a book that has been written before, whereas I think this one has not.

From John Mullin in the Guardian:

"If this were a science fiction novel, one would expect the central character to rebel, but there is never any question of that. When one of their "guardians", Miss Lucy, appears angry about their fate, Kathy and Tommy are curious, but uncomprehending. The cleverest, saddest aspect of the novel is the limit upon their imaginings."

The occupation of France is a bad example because most people were able to get on with their lives. And those who rubbed close to the occupation didn't simply ignore it, they thought about, tried to make peace with the occupiers, fought against them... reacted in some way. The donors don't react.

There's no indication that the rebelling minority of donors exists, and the donors that we see don't even fantasise about being in that minority. There are rumours of the donors who fell in love and got a deferment, not of the donors who stowed away on a boat to America, or who just disappeared, or who ran away at the last moment and had to be dragged to the operating table. Why is there a limit on their imaginings? I don't think it's psychologically defensible.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/bookclub/story/0,,1744265,00.html

"It is sometimes a feature of really arresting novels that some readers take as a virtue what others find a failing. I wrote in an earlier column that Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is made compelling by its characters' compliance with their fate. Human clones, bred to provide vital organs for others and condemned to die an early death, they embark willingly on each stage of the progress to "completion". Among the many readers writing in to the Guardian Book Club weblog, the issue of this failure to rebel has provoked the most animated questions and disputes. Several readers have strenuously questioned the willingness of the "students" and in particular the narrator, Kathy H, to cooperate with those who would exploit and finally kill them.

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Here is one characteristic comment. "I was wondering what others thought of the characters' overwhelming passivity - they never once tried to escape or tried to actually live a normal life once out 'in the world'." Often the objection comes from readers who are otherwise moved and convinced by the novel. "I found the book overwhelmingly powerful, but I am bothered by the issue of passivity - given that it's clear that the 'students' could pass for non-clones in the society around them." The same reader points out that, in one episode, Ishiguro shows us that "normal" people cannot identify them as clones. Another reader argued that the novelist could have devised a sci-fi way out of the problem. "Why would the Hailsham donors read and discuss complex works of literature, poetry and philosophy and not question or rebel against their fate in any way? I did not understand how this annoyance was not addressed in the novel by a simple ploy of electronic chips/tagging or (more chillingly relevant) by sophisticated ID cards."
Yet there were readers who felt the force of the novelist's decision. One noted that the story of the rebel against some future tyranny is the conventional pattern of dystopian narrative. "Writing a novel of rebellion is an easy option - though it's the difficult thing to do in life. Going with the flow is the easy thing to do - and is a much more difficult story to write in an interesting way." Another noted that Ishiguro does make one of the "students", Tommy, angry, but without allowing him the clarity of actual rebellion. "Through him, Ishiguro shows us just how far it is possible for conscious rebellion to take place - the result being nothing more than the impuissant bouts of inarticulate rage that mark his childhood."

The character of Tommy, furious about he knows not what, fascinated several who discussed the novel with its author at last week's Guardian Book Club. One reader spoke of the powerful "absence of rage" on the part of the "guardians" who look after the clones as well as the clones themselves. There was no one saying "this is intolerable", she observed, before adding, "I found that quite satisfying". The exclusion of anger from the book, and from the school where the clones are looked after, made the reader "turn inwards, and think about it".

Ishiguro said that he sympathised with the objection to the apparent passivity of the clones. When faced with the task of making some axiomatic condition of a novel more plausible, his instinct as a novelist had always been to avoid the problem. "Let's just assume that it is out of the question for them to escape. There is some big reason why it is impossible ... You just ask the reader to enter into the conceit." He admitted that he had no interest in sci-fi possibilities of technical explanation, which is why the book is set not in the future but the very recent past ("England, late 1990s").

Some bloggers were troubled about this, the plausibility of setting the novel not in a future place but in what one of those who discussed the setting with the novelist called "an analogue England". "An England where human beings are bred and killed for their organs would not much resemble today's world, but Ishiguro's is almost identical. There is no serious political controversy surrounding 'donation', no indication that a single clone has ever fought against their fate, none of the propaganda, incarceration and perversion of a democratic society that would be necessary to make the system work."

Yet there were readers ready with critically eloquent explanations of why this was an achievement of the novel. As one of them put it: "You don't escape or rebel against your reality if it's part of who you are, and all you've ever known. And, most of all, it is this that makes the novel so tragic. The real theme of Never Let Me Go is a more universal one: lives that are never what they could be, something I think most people in real life experience." The sense that a narrator's limitations were the point of a narrative reminded many readers of other Ishiguro novels, notably Remains of the Day. "He writes about characters who, however tragically or misguidedly, have a sense of their fate or role in life and he explores how those characters bestow value on their lives, which to others may seem unfulfilled or stunted." Feeling frustrated about what characters cannot do might be part of the purpose."

OTM. I seriously do think it comes down to Ishiguro's lack of intelligence and imagination.

& with that i'm out: i've already spent too much time thinking about this bad book.

XPost - Remains of the Day is pretty realistic, isn't it?

the more i think about this book the weker it seems.

the more i think about this book the weaker it seems.

This is the second novel I've read of his and it seems to be his thing to build a visual world with frustratingly blurry edges.

...it seems to be his thing to build a visual world with frustratingly blurry edges.

Just finished When We Were Orphans, reading the entire second (Shanghai) half in a rush before falling asleep around 1:00 AM last night. Had very bad dreams. Fantastic book! Surprised it's generated so little discussion around here.

Upthread, someone described it as an amusing unreliable narrator piece built around a “cracking detective yarn” (or words to that effect), but I think that sidesteps the novel’s biggest challenges. I took it for a slow-building psychedelic horror novel about madness, nostalgia and how easily we mistake our own motives. It toys with the idea and devices of detective fiction, but the mystery that sends the narrator on his quest is a MacGuffin, and very little of the action of the novel is devoted to criminological investigation. Instead, Ishiguro trades here in a crawly sort of suspense based on the clever piecing out and subversion of information, and a slowly accumulating, surreal distortion that creeps in from the edges and erodes any comfortable accommodation we might try to make with the “reality” of the story.

At the beginning of the novel, it’s hard to know how to take the narrator’s depiction of himself and the world he inhabits, and when it’s over, things aren’t any more certain. How crazy is he? How much of what he seems to observe should we accept, and what should we doubt? It’s clear, for instance, that he does not see himself as others do, but how far does that extend? Why are the importance of Shanghai and “The Detective” so seemingly exaggerated in the minds of others? Is he really a detective at all? What the hell is going on here?

Joan Acocella, in the New Yorker said that, “…unlike Ishiguro's earlier novels, this one never points us to the reality we're supposed to read through the narrator's distortions. At the same time, it never actually renounces realism,” which is exactly correct. It works at every moment to make credible the world it describes, while at the same time casting doubt on every aspect of that world. It does this not to encourage the reader to see through the surface narrative to a truer story hidden within, but simply to generate strange effects.

More than anything, this novel seems like an experiment in applying the techniques of The Unconsoled to the more traditionally realistic storytelling of Ishiguro’s earlier novels. As in that novel, reality is fluid, profoundly anxiety ridden, and as much a projection of the narrator’s psychological state as a depiction of a believable “real world”, but here the distortion is more subtle and more controlled, so that it’s less easy to pigeonhole the entire novel as the recounting of a fictional fever-dream. However, in the absence of an easy fallback like that, I’m not sure what to make of When We Were Orphans. I enjoyed it, but it bothered me quite a bit. I don’t think I understand the political ramifications, but get the impression that the narrator’s ordeal is a parable of some sort. I suspect that it does not seek to tell a story, but rather to manipulate the psychological effects of storytelling on the reader – in other words, to read When We Were Orphans is to have an experience that resembles “reading a novel”, but is in fact one step removed from that.

Any help, ideas, suggestions, etc? I’d really like to know what others made of this novel.

I only read it once, a long time ago, and I didn't really rate it. I absolutely adore The Unconsoled, and I think you're right in that WWWO uses the same dream-like techniques, but in the service of a scenario that is presented much more realistically. And that's really what irked me, I couldn't discount everything as obvious elaborate fantasy, but nor could I accept anything at face value. A definite falling between two stools, I thought. But, I didn't think too hard about why it might be like that - perhaps it's worth revisiting, especially as I was so sympathetic towards Never Let Me Go, which was similarly dismissed upthread and elsewhere as implausible and unrealistic.

I love The Unconsoled, too, but I don’t know that it would be worth your while to reread WWWO. I thought it was amazing, for whatever that’s worth. Then again, I like any puzzle that resists an easy solution but dangles one seemingly just within reach. Plus, it’s just so damn strange. Looking forward to Never Let Me Go, which I haven’t yet read.

P.S. Do think that WWWO's falling action and final scenes are a bit disappointing after the dizzying climax in the mazelike, bombed-out ghetto. Christopher's attempt to put things back in the box (so to speak) ring true, but undercut the power of what came before. And while it's hard to tell whether we're meant to accept the final reveal as the truth or just as a more subdued symptom, it's at least a mild letdown either way. Still, I liked the book enough to overlook these few small flaws.

I do think one problem with the switching back between unreliable narrator games and realistic historical detail in WWWO is that it can frustrate the reader's expectations. It would be interesting to read a straight historical novel about the Battle of Shanghai. It would also be interesting to read a psychological novel about an unreliable narrator who thinks he's a great detective. However, switching between the two, sometimes you might end up with the worst of both worlds - the surreal elements interfere with the interweaving of historical details and textures that transport us back in time, and the historical elements run the risk of seeming arbitrary and unrelated to the psychological inner story.

...the surreal elements interfere with the interweaving of historical details and textures that transport us back in time, and the historical elements run the risk of seeming arbitrary and unrelated to the psychological inner story.

It may not all work, and having had a day or so to think things over, I'm willing to concede that, whatever it's metaphorical implications, the handling of the final revelation regarding what really happened to Christopher's parents is probably a huge mistake on Ishiguro's part. It undercuts the terrible destabilization the preceding narrative had acheived in favor of something much less satisfying (if not quite as tidy as it might seem).

I just finished Never Let Me Go - for the second time, it turns out, as I'd read it a couple of years ago when someone lent it to me and told me what it was about. This time I was browsing the library and didn't recognise the name, and the blurb on the back didn't sound anything like what I'd remembered from the book, so I didn't realise.

I'd had most of the arguments on this thread running through my head as I was reading - ultimately it is slightly frustrating, but I think I fall on the side of "The cleverest, saddest aspect of the novel is the limit upon their imaginings." I've grown to really hate the style of novel where some secret is kept right until the end and the reader's main interest is figuring it out rather than caring about the characters. I don't think this book suffers too much from this, although the 'final confrontation' was slightly forced & formulaic.

I actually quite like the writing style, it exudes a childlike quality (although I could happily never read the phrase "as I say..." again). I thought all the little observations of, say, Ruth's actions were really well-written and touched a chord with me.

Slightly puzzled by the suggestion that the clones might/might not be distinguishable from "humans" - surely they are just the equivalent of a twin? I wonder if the flatness or immaturity is meant to be nature or nurture - I saw it as a result of how they'd been very carefully raised. That said I was half expecting one of the characters to hang themselves or something at the end. I noticed they never talk about love either, just 'being in a couple'.

My only other criticism is that I found it weird that the author would so overtly have the character say several times "I thought there was something darker underlying XYZ" - strikes me as superficial and lazy rather than giving us the feeling of 'darkness' himself. I guess without that kind of realisation by Kathy it would have been *too* flat and unfeeling. I don't know.

OK I don't know what I was thinking when I said they don't mention "love" as the whole last bit hinges around convincing people they're in love, but they don't *talk* about it convincingly or seem to have a grasp of what it is (hence Tommy's idea that you can prove it with the art). I guess that's the point he was trying to make..?

Also, just finished The Unconsoled, would be interested in anyone's ideas as to WTF it was all about.

in a more revealing but excised last chapter, the action switches to a domestic setting, where a young man is sat at a kitchen table. a calendar on the wall is turned to june. the young man with sagging shoulders stares at the back of a novel, a mixture of loss and confusion in his eyes. outside the kitchen window, a british man of japanese descent points and laughs at the young man, while autumn leaves fall around him.

:D

Up until about halfway through I was sure there was going to be some kind of real-world hint about it all, or I dunno, he was in a coma or something. Then I realised that probably wasn't going to happen, but I thought all the recurring and hinted-at events would culminate in something. For instance, I was sure there was going to be some car crash involving the kid Boris as there are refs to vertebrae breaking and his neck contracting and a few other things. Or we'd find out something about what his old school friend wasn't allowed to tell him.

I kind of like the dreaminess and characters but it seemed like there were tons of metaphors at play that I just didn't get.

I dunno man I think it's pretty straightforwardly just about LIFE and our basic inability to connect with anyone else... what's that quote along the lines of "we are all alone but it's important to keep on making gestures through the glass"? The message in The Unconsoled seems to be that the gestures are usually misinterpreted and largely futile. The dreaminess is just a way to let the protagonist experience - and inflict - this barrage of emotional torment without having to worry too much about the strictures of space and time and basic day-to-day plausibility.

When I put it like that it makes the book seem like a massive downer but, well, it is! I mean there's lols throughout but overall I do not come away from it filled with joie de vivre and love for my fellow man.

And not just about miscommunication, but poor self knowledge as well - or rather a lack of objectivity, how we place massive demands and expectations on other people but don't live up to what they demand of us.

Haven't read but good to hear, I was also underwhelmed by the Buried Giant, Zelda vibes aside.

xpost

And I only counted 2 or 3 "as I say"s - as opposed to its driving me to distraction in NLMG.

Klara and the Sun - it has the uncanny valley feeling present in almost all of his works, where the world is almost but not entirely the same as ours and the difference is discomfiting. It doesn't have the emotional impact of his best stuff though. There was one bit that approached The Unconsoled, where two people have an argument in a cafe. They don't hold anything back - not in the sense of screaming at each other, but in the way they say absolutely everything that is on their minds, not devoid of bitterness or enmity but unafraid of judgement, not entirely free from petty point scoring but also wanting to be seen, to have their pain recognised. Somewhere between a row and a couples therapy session. There's an emotional depth and honesty there which when he pulls it off (once or twice here, throughout The Unconsoled) is breathtaking. It's a shame the narrator here is such a cipher.

― Scheming politicians are captivating, and it hurts (ledge), Wednesday, 21 April 2021 07:51 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is so true re really nailing people and their POVs here that it seems so much more "affected" that the narrator is so "reasonable" and observant yet not - but I think that's the point, again, the negative space in Klara of what humanity is and why she can only come so close.

Yes maybe that's the point but I couldn't get over the flatness and shallowness of Klara - (or the couple in TBG). As the narrator she is very much the heart of the book and she's just not a real person!

Also the way everyone accepted Klara's fatuous idea about going to the setting sun was ridiculous. You'd think an AI (proper artificial general intelligence, not a chatbot) would have the basic facts of astronomy in its coding. I accept this second point may be akin to complaining about the donor system in NLMG - it's just the world he's set up and you take it or leave it. The first point seems more critically unrealistic about human behaviour.

I don't think she told them exactly what she was doing but there was a bit of 'well you're a super intelligent AI so why not'. With Rick it seemed fine. With the dad I guess they set him up to be a renegade-action kind of guy so it sort of fits, but is forced. But then chasing the Mcguffin WORKED! I was so PISSED OFF. But then that left me with Questions so, good job, I guess, KI

And I hate to say it but I do feel like Klara sometimes. Like I know intellectually why people might be doing something but I'm not always sure how to handle it or can't quite grasp subtleties - I think I am a bit neurodivergent so I kind of like the matter-of-fact character and seeing how she interprets things (some things. Some are left completely opaque - I think that's one of the more annoying/glaring contradictions, that she understands physics and human interaction to the point of being able to correctly judge why people are doing things, but completely idiotic about other things.).

Just finished Artist of the Floating World. Admired the elegance of the sentences, control of mood, etc, but overall it felt a bit threadbare, like an overextended short story. Perhaps, having only read one of his novels, I'm mistaking his strengths for weaknesses?

threadbare, overextended as actual strengths??
Seems like would take a miracle, like the "fantasy" I mentioned on WAYR?

Just now made it almost all the way through Klara and the Sun before echoing another ilxor's recent cry re another offering, "What the Hell, Ishiguro?!" Because of a spot of fantasy appearing in the swirl and clank of fairly rigorous, or at least committed, faith-keeping science fiction, the kind with nuances of individual characters, in context of small group and societal dynamics, influenced by technological options and some related shades and spaces back there (a lot of detail, but gaps for readers to fill as well, agreeable balance, I think).
So better to think of it the way Wells labelled his most popular novels as "scientific romance," like, don't expect total rigor, and know that this sweetened spot (though not "sweet spot," in terms of ideal balance) of authorial convenience leads around and back into the overall cadence, groove of involving elements

lots of expository conversations, but also hearing yourself say that, and how verbalization x thought loops, plans, decisions snowball that way, re diff ideas and "Oh it wasn't even really an idea...(later, re same conversation)Mom just had this shitty idea..." as everything keeps moving along.

The plot's pretty tight, so hard to highlight w/o indicating spoilers, but, re xpost Klara and the Sun as scientific romance, I now notice that Library of Congress data has it classified as Science Fiction and Love Stories, which is right: these are the love stories, as told by Klara, AF (Artificial Friend) series B2, of her and her chosen child owner,Josie, of Josie and her longtime best friend, Rick, as they now struggle with new roles of boyfriend and girlfriend, also stories of love of children and parents, incl. more struggles of course.
Model B2, state of the art/being superseded by new B3, but perhaps compensating for relatively limited features, is here especially challenged tune into and understand humans, sometimes remixing on the fly, as do the humans--because Josie is one of those lucky children, not just gifted, but lifted, genetically edited, which is risky, expensive in a lot of ways, but worth it, if you want your child to have a chance at anything in this world, which is strange and getting stranger, also more familiar, just up the road a little way (copyright 2021, but no pandemic culture; he probably wrote it before we were assured of the probably lingering elements of that, but isolation is a way of life in this story, though Josie and her privileged peers are now reaching the age, as part of college prep, when they must have meetings, which means learning how to be with people outside of the immediate family and household---and that's enough for this month, kids).

― dow, Wednesday, January 26, 2022 3:15 PM