Short takes: ‘Klara and the Sun,’ ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ and ‘Night Train’

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
March 28, 2021

The 2021 book Klara and the Sun is the eighth novel by Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature four years ago. It’s narrated entirely by the title character, an “AF” or artificial friend who opens the story as a piece of merchandise in a store in an unnamed American2 city.

Klara becomes a companion to Josie, a sickly girl who lives with her divorced mother in a remote home in the country. Much of the narrative plays out as a domestic drama involving Klara, Josie, “the Mother” and Rick, a teenager about Josie’s age who lives in the only nearby house.

The narrator is at once perceptive and naïve. She is a sort of precocious child, much like the youngster whom she was designed and purchased to befriend. Klara, who is solar powered, conceives of “the Sun” as a deity. Indeed, she approaches it as sunset beseeching it to cure Josie.