Small Thoughts, Not Worth Much | 'Klara and the Sun' (2021) - Kazuo Ishiguro

“There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”

Rather overhyped. Has it’s interesting ideas around social assimilation and how the higher class homogenise their external behaviours to fit cohesively, alienating and subjugating the ‘other’, while also making the place they hold on the hearts of others uniform and insincere, blemishing what Ishiguro rotely but sincerely designates as the constitution of unique and miraculous humanity—the “something very special”, the place we inhabit in the hearts of others—but the book is mainly held back by Klara’s trite narrative voice as a curious born-yesterday android. Ishiguro’s prose doesn’t offer much to this trope, at best it still nullifies the emotional breadth of a given section and at worst it actively spells things out that would be more poignant left unsaid, such as the scene of Klara witnessing the reveal of Chrissie's greater plan, likely a holdover from the previous life ‘Klara and the Sun’ lived as a children’s novel. Fine enough science fiction, but I was expecting more given the high praise the author has received.