BOOKS: a great read by Kazuo Ishiguro, plus the month’s best fiction and more

By Kazuo Ishiguro, Faber

There’s an Orwellian aura to Kazuo Ishiguro’s powerful new novel; so much so that you can’t help feeling we will be living in this world of beneficent robots and genetic editing all too soon.

Klara is an extraordinary protagonist, an AF – Artificial Friend – whose kindness, self-sacrifice and humanity pose many questions about what we humans have become. We first encounter Klara in a robot store. She is not the latest design – the B3s have sharper cognitive functions and better solar absorption – but B2s, from the fourth series, in the words of the ‘Manager’: “some say have never been surpassed”.

It’s saleswoman’s patter but Klara, we quickly discover, is special. She has a unique appetite for observation and learning, and depths of empathy that grow with every real person she encounters.

Fourteen-and-a-half-year-old

Josie was smitten from the moment she spied Klara in the shop window. She found her French look – “short hair quite dark” – very cute. But there was more to it, for when Josie first talked to Klara, something happened between the troubled teen and the AF … a connection. Klara not only displayed the smart intellect AFs were built with, she had “kind eyes” that belied an understanding of something deeper. It takes a while for Josie to persuade her mum, but eventually they return and buy Klara.

In her new home, Klara learns of Josie’s illness, and over time we grasp the truth about its dark origins and the pain that divides her family. Klara believes she has the power to cure Josie and slowly, meticulously sets her plan in place.

The reader walks with Klara, willing her on; she is the person we would all like to be. Through Klara, we discover what a painful mess society is in, with epidemic loneliness fuelling the need for AFs.

As Klara understands more about her place in this flawed world, Josie’s father asks: “Do you believe in the human heart? … I’m speaking in the poetic sense … Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual?”

Another quiet masterpiece from the brilliant Kazuo Ishiguro.