Klara and the Sun is another novel by Ishiguro where he manages the seemingly impossible: to engage the reader despite using rather flat narrative voice (a childlike robot) and deliberately refusing to explore the larger matters looming around the plot (dystopian society, its politics and history, human relations in it, etc.). The first part I resented – although by now I knew how skilful Ishiguro can be with his dull narrators, achieving uncanny effects with those voices. But listening to Klara’s observations in the shop, and then to her Sun-worshiping thoughts throughout the novel was a drag. The second – refusing to develop properly the dystopian present of the novel, with all the issues, problems, refusing to explain anything to the reader – I rather liked. McEwan would have spent 50 pages (spread out through the book, of course), explaining all those things in detail, pondering on them, reflecting on the possible outcomes… Ishiguro leaves all that as merely an outline – the reader should by now know enough about dystopia and sci-fi to fill in the gaps, including those political inferences.

Did Klara’s narrative grow uncanny? Yes. The problem was precisely her “positive thinking”, never being resentful, accepting her fate. This made the novel unbearably sad. The super-intelligent robot is given childlike nature because her purpose is to be an artificial friend to a child – that’s the idea; for the same reason she is prepared to be treated like an object without any resentment. And this combination of qualities – unlikely as it is – makes the narrative very disturbing. It is not just a sentient creature with deep feelings, moral integrity and inventive mind that is shamelessly objectified by humans and eventually discarded, as in Machines Like Me. It is all that in a child, and a child who agrees to be treated like a thing. Klara is not as brilliant in her speech or actions as McEwan’s Adam, she doesn’t write poetry, doesn’t want desperately to discuss Hamlet. But that image of her waiting for death in the junkyard is all the more poignant.

The plot of Ishiguro’s novel is sketchy and unlikely – mother thinking of replacing her beloved daughter with AF is hardly a workable concept. Klara’s grasp of the world around her appears to be rather superficial – we are told that she is extremely intelligent, but we see rather limited evidence of that. The second issue might explain the first: she fails to communicate to us what is really happening in that family. Or, perhaps, her memories are edited by someone who retrieves them (Capaldi?). The most interesting moments in the novel are those when Klara’s emotions are engaged and her vision becomes split into boxed – fragmentation that seems an error, but is, in fact, a more truthful reflection of the world (fragmented, conflicted, broken), and allows Klara an insight into the nature of things. Once again, the supposedly flat narrative surface is fractured and in that broken mirror some shadow of meaning is glimpsed, briefly.

Compared to McEwan’s novel, I still see this text as less complex, and even its ambiguities are less haunting than in Machines Like Me. But its desperate sadness is wonderful.