| Kazuo Ishighuro |
Fearful Circuitry
KLARA AND THE SUN: A NOVEL BY KAZUO ISHIGURO. NEW YORK: KNOPF. 320 PAGES. $28.
KLARA, THE TITLE CHARACTER OF KAZUO ISHIGURO’S new novel, would seem to have some serious shortcomings as a narrator. Introduced in a retail outlet in an unnamed city where she alternates between the window and less desirable display positions, Klara is a solar-powered AF, or Artificial Friend, who exists solely to assist and accompany the human child who purchases her. Despite her impressive capacity for mimesis and spongelike powers of absorption, we never forget Klara’s obvious limitations. Her view of the world is circumscribed, her vocabulary stilted, her agency virtually nonexistent. All of which make her an oddly perfect fit for Ishiguro, who has long specialized in the blinkered protagonist. What his tentative narrators tell us, about themselves and the worlds they inhabit, is never the full picture; in fact, the pathos of his work routinely derives from how little his characters are able to admit or understand.