Klara and the Sun

By: Kazuo Ishiguro

Narrated by: Sura Siu

Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

From the bestselling and Booker Prize winning author of Never Let me Go and The Remains of the Day, a stunning new novel - his first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature - that asks, what does it mean to love? A thrilling feat of world-building, a novel of exquisite tenderness and impeccable restraint, Klara and the Sun is a magnificent achievement, and an international literary event.

©2021 Kazuo Ishiguro (P)2021 Faber Audio

Masterpiece

Dystopic science fiction but also a beautiful portrait of the mind of a kind robot.

stunning

surprising, sometimes tough on people, their emotional mess and inability to truly connect and be frank

Beautiful, serene storytelling

Insightful, beautiful, terrible story of love, togetherness and what it is to be human, all from a naïve narrator you can't help but fall in love with yourself. Highly recommend.

Klara and the Sun

In a timely where AI is becoming more mainstream, it won't be long before robots like Klara operate in the real world. The book makes you think, like good books should.

Much to consider

As the risk of sounding cynical, I found the 'what it is to love' theme of only secondary interest here. I much preferred the AI implications, especially the known unknowns of how an AI 'reasons'. Even Klara's novel perspective of parceling stimuli into overlapping boxes was a useful reminder of how humans default to the human experience of awareness as the universal gold standard (spare a thought for the animal kingdom). Not wild about the narrator though - a more neutral accent would have suited me better... Juliet Stevenson I'm thinking would have been spot on.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Brilliant all round. My first Ishiguro and on audible at that. Love his writing and this outstanding performance has sparked a flame.

Good, but lacks punch.

Excellent, clear narrator who captured the AI personality perfectly. The book was engaging but lacked punch throughout, always promising a twist but never delivering a satisfying one.

Decent naïvist SF marred by terrible accent

First person narrative told from the perspective of an Artificial Friend. Many timely and interesting themes. The narrator's attempt at British English is terrible and really took me out of the story. Otherwise decent if slightly slow narration.

Starts out great but falls flat

Apart from the narrator being pretty atrocious with weird repetitive inflection and attempts at accents, the story starts out great but falls flat from the middle towards the end. There was great potential for exploring interesting concepts that never quite came to fruition.

Wonderful - but some issues with narration

Wonderful story about the nature of humanity, love, and faith.
Narration was good - slightly flat as befitting the android character. However, it fell down in distracting ways (for this English listener) when voicing an 'English' character. Sounded more patrician NY than actually British, and apparently the main characteristic of the accent is to put stresses on the wrong words AND sylLABles. Really annoying, but I tried to get past it