I first spotted the name of Kazuo Ishiguro on the back cover of Homo Deus. I had no idea who he was, so I looked him up. Wow.
Next thing, I went to the library in search of his books. And there they were. I picked this one, read the first page and took it with me.
The mildly dystopian society of the novel is dystopian only mildly because it’s pretty much like the present, at least in the West. (Replace “lifted” with “priveleged”, “oblong” with “smartphone”, and “The Yard” with “nursing home”.) The protagonist, Klara the Artificial Friend, religiously follows the First Asimov’s Law — to the degree of self-sacrifice. And how do the humans repay her, the ungrateful monkeys they are? (Jessie the cowgirl of Toy Story springs to mind.)
...Manager placed a hand on my shoulder and said, in a quieter voice than before:
‘Let me tell you something, Klara. Children make promises all the time. They come to the window, they promise all kinds of things. They promise to come back, they ask you not to let anyone else take you away. It happens all the time. But more often than not, the child never comes back. Or worse, the child comes back and ignores the poor AF who’s waited, and instead chooses another. It’s just the way children are. You’ve been watching and learning so much, Klara. Well, here’s another lesson for you. Do you understand?’
I like the way Ishiguro writes. As far as I know, his other works are not narrated by intelligent gynoids, so I don’t expect to find this particular style there. Off to the library to check out the next novel.
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