The novel begins with Klara observing the world through the window, waiting to be bought by a customer. McEwan’s „Dead as They Come“ presents a reverse of this: a man who falls in love with a mannequin, watches it from day to day, and finally buys it. McEwan’s story is about objectification, done all the more disturbingly because at first it seems that the narrating hero endows with life a lifeless object. Hail to the power of imagination! But no, as we soon discover he only does it in order to objectify „her“ again – treat his „woman“ as a perfectly passive thing. In Ishiguro’s story, Klara is the narrator, and so she is granted agency from the start; yet her actual consciousness is always under question. The narrative at first is rather flat, with simple sentences (that’s Ishiguro’s gift, to create a captivating story through the use of a boring narrator). But she longs to observe and she begins to interpret what she sees, though not always correctly. The added twist is her childlike nature – this makes the text all the more disturbing and moving.