​Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is a novel about an Artificial Intelligent humanoid robot, Klara, as she navigates the world, first in a store and then in the home of a family. She starts off observing the world through the display window of a store that sells the robots, seeing how people interact, the pollution created by smoke-stacks, the sun reflecting off windows. One day, a child spies her in the window on her way to a portrait session saying that the girl, Josie, wants to take Klara home, though this is only brief. Eventually Josie returns with her mother and they buy Klara after they ask her to replicate Josie’s walk. Klara becomes integrated into the family, watching the Bubble Game between Josie and her neighborhood friend, Rick, attending Integration meetings with the other kids in the neighborhood, becoming Josie’s friend and a caretaker. This is because Josie has health issues that were caused by gene editing to make her smarter. It’s alluded that Josie’s older sister had also undergone the same thing, but had died due to health issues afterward. In an effort to preserve Josie and her likeness, the mother and Josie had been going to get her portrait taken in the city. Though, it turns out after Klara deduces and overhears that the “portrait” is a way for the mother to replicate Josie and put some sort of costume over Klara that looks like Josie. Meanwhile, because Klara is powered by the sun, she believes that all that needs to be done is for the pollution makers, which block the sun, to be destroyed. Klara and the father, who had separated from the mother, go on a mission to destroy a pollution maker. Klara believes this will fix Josie because she had communed with the sun at a barn near Josie’s house. However, Josie’s condition worsens to the point that everyone loses hope except Klara. Klara makes one final plea to the sun and believes after a stormy and then sunny morning that Josie will get better. Somehow, Josie does return to her health and eventually goes off to college. The story ends in a junkyard where Klara is standing observing and thinking about Josie when the store manager talks to her many years later.
 
Ishiguro surprised me with how interesting getting inside the mind of an AI could be. He writes out specific observations that a human wouldn’t make, but a robot that doesn’t know any different would. For example, Klara believes that because the sun powers her, it also powers Josie and that the sun is a being that will listen. So, when Klara pleas to the sun, it’s logical to the robot that is solar-powered, but less intuitive to the other characters. This too seems to be a way for Ishiguro to discuss, and maybe critique, religion and the belief of God. The sun is a stand-in for God, and as the reader we know that the sun can’t make the specific requests Klara makes come true. But somehow, Josie does get better whether through the improbability of the sun or of medicine. Klara, the first-person narrator, believes it to be the former. Throughout the read, Ishiguro does make it seem like Klara’s beliefs and actions are ridiculous, though in the end she got the results needed. I think on the whole a decent read.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is about an expatriate, Jake, who travels around Spain and France with his friend Lady Brett Ashley post-World War I. It follows their nights out at bars, their café attendance, bull-fighting and fishing. In the summer, Jake and a few of the other men he’s met on his travels decide to go fishing and will meet up with Brett later for a Spain fiesta. Afterward, they attend a bull-fighting celebration that lasts a week. During this time, Brett first gets close with one of Jake’s friends, and then begins to like one of the bull-fighters. The bull-fighter does fairly well during the bull-run, killing three bulls, and afterward he takes Brett along with him to Paris. Jake goes to the south of France instead, but when he gets a telegram to meet Brett, he follows. It turns out she broke it off with the bull-fighter and even though Jake likes her, they only imagine what it would be like to be together.
 
Hemingway is known for his short and exacting sentences, which makes sense to convey an emotionally detached character. In the case of Jake, he pines for Brett while she is with other men, but mustn’t be too emotional for fear that he will become too feminine. Though I found the writing style to read closer to just a journal entry, such as “I did this, and then I did that”. Sure, it does have an effect but not one that I particularly enjoyed. At its heart, this story is about a man being friend-zoned—though friend-zoned in the twentieth century. So I can see why it’s a popular novel, but for a certain type of disaffected man. It wasn’t really the novel for me, but not terrible either.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5