Klara et le Soleil

Je ne sais pas trop quoi penser de ce roman. Je me suis un peu ennuyé pendant une bonne partie du livre, où certains concepts clés ne sont pas explicités et on nage juste dans les considérations et remarques d'une AA : Amie Artificielle, à mi-chemin entre les remarques très pertinentes et précises et un décalage, une mauvaise interprétation des sentiments humains. Le procédé est intéressant, mais on en attend un peu plus pour avancer dans les pages, d'autant que le ton objectivo-naïf n'est pas des plus engageants.

Il y a tout de même quelques points très intéressants, comme la manière dont Klara, l'androïde, perçoit l'espace dès qu'elle est désorientée, tout en "boîtes" plis ou moins grosses selon l'importance signifiante de l'élément qui s'y trouve. Un concept difficile à rendre en images (il m'a fallu plusieurs récurrences avant de comprendre de quoi on parlait), mais qui réussit indéniablement à nous mettre en empathie avec l'androïde, face à quelque chose de trop complexe pour que notre cerveau l'interprète correctement.

Globalement, Ishiguro a peu éveillé mon intérêt pour ses personnages ou les mécaniques qui sous-tendent ce futur, même si je sais que ce n'est pas l'objectif recherché ici, où ce sont les questions "métaphysiques" amenées par Klara et le rôle qu'on veut lui assigner qui sont le véritable sujet (et même de ce côté là, je n'ai pas été exposé à des choses particulièrement innovantes). D'autres lecteurs sauront y trouver leur bonheur, c'est tout de même un livre doux avec de beaux moments.

This was an interesting read and given that I have not read any of the author's other works, I was not quite sure what I was getting into. (Though, I have watched Remains Of The Day)

This book felt simple and yet complex. The simplicity was in the narrator: an AI or artificial friend who seems a bit naive and limited to her programming being a friend with a sick child. The complexity was in everything surrounding the two of them that wasn't said or maybe not said too loudly.

It is scifi and post apocalyptic, but you would not know it first delving into the story. Klara is a unique narrator but unreliable for such interesting times. Her unique view of the world drives the narrative most of the time.

The uses of faith, family, culture, society, technology and relationships really fleshes out the story and gives the quiet parts more weight.

Maybe I'll try another book by this author. I really enjoyed this.

I'd never read anything from Ishiguro before. I picked it up, read the entire thing in one day from dawn til dusk, and found it such an easy read. I didn't even feel particularly engrossed I just knew that I was enjoying it and I wanted to read on. I was unfamiliar with Ishiguro's craftmanship and was unwittingly sucked into his trap

I won't spoil anything, but I spent a good hour or so in silent reflection after finishing the book, and for the week that followed I barely worked and spent a lot of time thinking about the book and reading reviews to try and figure out what on earth had just happened to me

A very readable journey into a possible future. A very interesting narrator, an artificially intelligent humanoid with good observational abilities but limited reasoning, which ultimately allows her to draw some curious and false conclusions.

Minor things about the proposed future slightly irk, for example we seem to have autonomous artificial friends, but driving is still something done by humans. Walking around is likely more difficult to automate than driving around, though companionship does not appear to be as difficult as we might have thought/hoped. That said, the future inhabitants all have something called an 'oblong', which seems to be roughly a futuristic smart phone. Do we then really need the artificial friends to be humanoid in look? Why can the artificial friend not simply be interfaced with through the oblong? Lastly, it seems that the artificial friends can perform chores if asked, why then does the main family still have a housekeeper? Why does not everyone have a robotic maid?

Still these are just nitpicks about the possible future, the main throw of the work, and the pleasure of reading it, is not significantly affected. At times, the book may seem to belabor about the point a bit. Perhaps some scenes could have been cut, or perhaps I am just missing their significance.

• I listened to this as an audiobook, my first checked out from Libby.
• I liked the narrator's voice and felt it was generally quite well to meet the range of voices for the characters.
• The book took too long to build up and the ending was too abstract and fell apart.
• I also generally didn't like or understand why the characters were selected with the traits they had.
• Some of the dialogue felt well played, while others felt jarring
• In the end, my favorite part is Klara's relationship with the sun, which goes for the most part unexplored with other characters. This book has vague environmentalist themes.
• many of the tropes that show up in this book I feel, have been better expressed in other works I've read.
• I think this book would be fine for a middle schooler as it goes generally without much complexity with its readability. Though I do think it should be followed with journaling or a book discussion. I would be curious how this book could be used to engage youth about AI ethics.

I love everything I've ever read by Kazuo Ishiguro. His prose isn't filled with vocab words and doesn't ever even feel anything but mundane, and yet somehow, every single line is poetry. This book did not disappoint. Lovely, loving, heart-rending... and also exploring the very real potential futures of artificial intelligence, machine learning, friendship, and disposability.