"Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara and the Sun is the latest work by the Nobel Prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. This is a Sci-Fi novel set in not such a distant future, where one can go to a store and purchase an Artificial Friend (AF) for one's child. In fact, the entire novel is written from the point of view of an AF called Klara. We first meet her in the store, where she, along with other AFs, is waiting to be chosen by someone's child. We then follow her, as she is taken into a home of a teenage girl named Josie, who lives with her mom and a housekeeper outside the city. 

Overall, I really liked this book. In many places, Ishiguro just hints at things. We might be guessing what is going on, but (a) we see the world through the eyes of an AF, and (b) nothing is truly spilled out. We do not know the specifics of the geopolitical/economic/social landscape. We get hints that come through bits of conversations heard by Klara. She does not read or listen to the news, and most of the information comes to us from interactions with and around her. Ishiguro leaves a lot of things to the reader's imagination. 

It's a great book to read with a book club or a group of friends and discuss. It touches upon things like: what makes us human, what is friendship, human attachment, how we deal with grief. One thing that struck me in this book was how socially awkward all the characters are (except for possibly Rick and Josie's father, who are by no means "the normal people" in this society). Gene editing is a reality already, and in this fictional society, majority of children get some sort of gene editing procedure - what are the moral/ethical issues that go along with that?

I did really enjoy this book and I am looking forward to discussing it with my book club. 5 out of 5 stars.