Klara

I read Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel this week, Klara and the Sun, over two evenings, the second of which went much later than it should have.

Klara is an Artificial Friend, a kind of machine sold as a companion for children. When the book opens she's in a shop window, watching the street and learning what she can about people from the way they pass by. A girl named Josie chooses her, and most of the rest of the book is Klara in Josie's house, paying attention. That's what she does. She watches, she tries to understand, she tries to help, and she gets things wrong in ways that are hard to read.

I won't say what happens. It came out three weeks ago, and some of you will want it fresh. I'll only say that Ishiguro does the thing he always does, where a narrator tells you everything plainly and you understand more than she does, and that I don't think anyone else alive could have written it.

What I keep coming back to isn't the plot. It's how much I cared about her. I've written characters whose whole job is to be on the player's side, and I know how it's done: the small attentions, the patience, the way they bring up something you said an hour ago. I know where the strings are. I could see them in Klara too, every one. It didn't help at all.

I finished it on Thursday night and sat for a while afterward with the lamp on, not reading anything. I'm still not sure what I was feeling, or I am, and I'd rather not write it down. It's been a long year of rooms with one person in them. Maybe that's all it was.

Have you read it? Did it leave you sitting with the lamp on too?