In time, Klara is chosen by a fourteen-year-old girl Josie whose face, when she saw Klara, ‘filled with joy’ and after the purchase is completed, Klara moves in with Josie and her mother.įor all Klara’s ‘observational qualities’, there are limits on her capacity to correctly interpret the physical world. Further on in the novel, Klara recalls this incident and seeks the Sun’s intervention to again save someone from death. In perhaps an application of the pathetic fallacy, Klara assumes that the Sun with ‘a special kind of nourishment’ had saved him. Ignored by the passers-by, he lies unmoving until the Sun reaches him when he suddenly awakes and sits up.

This belief first emerges when Klara observes a ‘Beggar man’ lying on the footpath opposite the store and appearing to have died. She believes that such a spot was not conducive to her being selected by a customer to be an active AF.ĪFs are solar-powered and Klara – through whose eyes we view this new world – believes the Sun to be a powerful being who has the power to give and restore life to both humans and AFs. Imbued with some human emotions, Klara feels disappointment when moved away from the window and relegated to a place further back in the store. Complimented by the store manager for her ‘outstanding observational qualities’, Klara spends her time watching through the store window the street and its traffic and pedestrians. Klara is first seen in a store along with a number of other AFs. In the world which Klara inhabits – a world which seems not too far in the future from our own – children are schooled at home through the use of ‘oblongs’ or tablets. AFs are bought from stores to provide friendship to children who are physically and socially isolated. The word ‘robot’ is used only once through the entire book and then pejoratively.

Klara is a robot although, in this new book by Nobel Prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, she is more properly called an Artificial Friend – an AF.

Klara and the sun synopsis