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metamorphesque · 1 year

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― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

#klara and the sun #kazuo ishiguro #quotes #literature #translated literature #hope

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aseaofquotes · 16 days

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Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

#Kazuo Ishiguro #Klara and the Sun #pain #happiness

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checanty · 7 months

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HELLO EVERYBODY! Guess who got to illustrate Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant for the @foliosociety??? The book turned out so beautiful, I can die happy now.

You can order a copy here.

#Still trying to figure out how to take *aesthetic* pictures #this is such a dream come true!#Also I'm so behind on promoting so much stuff #Folio Society #The Buried Giant #Book Illustration #beautiful books #books #Kazuo Ishiguro

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miamaimania · 11 days

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Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Farewell to Tokyo' (2018)

#minimalist #tokyo #kazuo ishiguro #contemporary

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haveyoureadthisbook-poll · 1 month

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#never let me go #kazuo ishiguro #science fiction #book poll #have you read this book poll #polls

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stanleyscubrick · 4 months

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The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

#the remains of the day #kazuo ishiguro #i actually feel the opposite #mornings are my favorite part of the day #maybe tho bc work doesnt let me enjoy sunsets anymore #anyway gotta get back on the reading grind #gotta lock in #mine #studyblr #studyspo #dark academia #light academia #booklr #writing #chaotic academia #literature #classical academia

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javertisgay · 2 months

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#the remains of the day #kazuo ishiguro #can anybody who likes remains please interact… PLEASE

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litsnaps · 7 days

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#literature #quotes #Kazuo Ishiguro #The Remains of the Day #quote #lit #books #words

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uaravsh · 7 months

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"Don't you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried?"

- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (@uaravsh )

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literary-illuminati · 17 days

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2024 Book Review #19 – Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the third book I’ve picked up as part of my whole aspirational ‘read a piece of non-SFF capital-l Literature every month’ New Years resolution. Of those three, it is the second I opened only to discover it actually is science fiction and/or fantasy after all. Which is just a very funny thing to happen twice, and also meant the book was significantly less outside my comfort zone than I’d expected. Which did make it quite a pleasant read.

The story follows Klara, an AF (Artificial Friend, a companion robot for children) in a broadly sketched and mildly dystopian future America. At first it just follows her life in the shop where she’s kept, observing the world around her and interacting with the store manager and the other AFs, but the meat of the book is her life with the family who buys her. Over time you learn that Josie, her child, suffers from severe and increasing health issues as a consequence of being ‘lifted’ (genetically enhanced, in some unclear way) in the womb. Klara, being solar-powered and having quietly developed a one-robot religion underpinned by a firm belief in the power and benevolence of Mr. Sun (and a moral opposition to Pollution, which obscures and drives him away) does her best to invoke his help in nourishing and restoring Josie. At the same time, she learns that her job is not just to comfort Josie but, should she die, to be her mother’s replacement goldfish and imitate her perfectly.

The setting is broadly sketched and never really exposited upon – it’s just not something Klara is particularly interested in – but it’s a very modern sort of dystopia. Much of the populace, even among the American professional elite, have been left ‘post-employed’ by robotic automation. The remaining meritocratic elite have embraced novel and risky genetic enhancements for their children, as the only possible way of ensuring they get into a good school and one of the few good careers left. There are fascist militia compounds off in the distance somewhere. The overall feeling is that of a society dimly aware it’s midway through collapsing, but with no ideas of how to arrest its fall. But since Klara has no interest at all in either politics or economics, we only see this as it directly intrudes upon the story, with nary a lecture or manifesto to be seen.

I’ve only ever read one other book by Ishiguro, so I really don’t know how much this generalizes, but the similarities to Never Let Me Go really were striking. Both books are set in really rather horrifying societies, but portrayed in an utterly normalized way by someone who never even thinks to question the real rules they live under. Which is even more striking because in both cases the protagonist is seen by society as only quasi-human – like a person, but existing only in relation to and for the benefit of the people who really matter. And in both cases the story follows the protagonist who lives their life moving through the role they were made for without ever really resisting it, let alone changing it. Not that the roles of ‘friend to sick child’ and ‘mandatory organ donor’ are exactly comparable but, you know.

A definition I’ve always kind of liked for what makes literary fiction, well, literary is that it’s as or more concerned with the beauty and presentation of its prose than it is on the information the prose is conveying. Not at all true in terms of how the term’s actually used (genre is marketing), but it works for me, and lets this book count as literature quite handily. The whole story is told quite tightly from Klara’s point of view, and it’s a pleasure to read. Even if it took me more than a few pages to really understand how she described scenes, always foregrounding the ways they were divided by grids or patterns of the sun’s light.

Portraying the normal human society through the eyes of a naive and somewhat alien narrator to get away without explaining everything is a classic sci fi trope for a reason, but it’s overall used really well here as well.

I’m still not entirely sure how to interpret the sudden intrusion of magical realism with the ending. But otherwise, really quite a good read.

#book review #klara amd the sun #kazuo ishiguro #sff #literature

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coffeeastronaut · 6 months

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M*A*S*H - 4x01, Welcome to Korea / 11x16, Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen | Red vs Blue - 10x19, Party Crasher / 9x20, Hate to Say Goodbye, 10x22, Don't Say It | Doctor Who - 9x12, Hell Bent, 60th Anniversary Trailer | Mort, Sir Terry Pratchett | Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

#web weaving #mi #idont know wherei was going with this. but head full of mash x rvb x never let me go thoughts #long post #eek. sorry this is so long.#mine #okay hopefully thats enough buffer tags that this will only show up in my orginization tags and not spam the main tags but. oh well #mash #rvb #discworld #never let me go #kazuo ishiguro #dw

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gymncpdie · 7 months

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ig: @bookinanook

#studyblr #books #bookstagram #bookworm #classic academia #light academia aesthetic #light academia #booklr #dark academia #kazuo ishiguro #ernest hemingway

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quotessentially · 3 months

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From Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day

#quote #quotes #Kazuo Ishiguro #The Remains of the Day #words #books #literature

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phaedraismyusername · 10 months

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Hi hello I have been knee deep in a genre binge so here are some literary sci-fi books that deal with loneliness as a core theme

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Translated from French this book follows the youngest girl in a group of 40 women who are being kept in a cage underground in an unknown place, for unknown reasons, until one day they get the chance to escape triggering a search for answers and survival on a desolate surface.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is a very subtle dystopian story about a group of people who spend their childhoods at an extremely secretive english boarding school, the course of their relationships, and where they are at the end of their lives. There's a subtle feeling of wrongness from the first chapter and the author spends the rest of the novel very slowly revealing the reasons why.

Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma

The super short form pitch for this book is 'Fleabag if there was an option to yeet herself to another planet'. Iris is in a long term relationship with depression, kind of hates her pointless job, sometimes hates her family, and is generally overwhelmed by the weight of existence, when she hears about Nyx - earth's first space colony - and thinks that just maybe it could be the answer to all her problems.

Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon

When the population of a company sponsored colony finds out they have been designated a failure and the people are to be packed up and shipped off to another planet to try again, one little old lady decides that for the first time in her long life she's going to break the rules - she's going to stay and live her best life alone on the planet, and finally get some peace and quiet. What could go wrong?

Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley

Skyward Inn is an odd little book set in a future where Earth has come into contact with an alien world that quickly surrendered to humanity. The story follows a small group of kind of unlikeable people who live behind the walls of the 'western protectorate' - a place in the moors that's decided to isolate itself and live like the old days with rudimentary technology for a simple life. Until strangers appear and things start to get... weird. Slower, stranger and with more body horror than you might expect.

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mostlyghostie · 9 months

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My 2023 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reads so far.

Four is pretty good for it only being August, fingers crossed there will be a few more new faves out of my tbr shelf.

Anyone else read any of these?

#books #booklr #bookstack #literary fiction #possession #kazuo ishiguro

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dearratroi · 8 months

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I think what really makes me sad after reading Klara and the Sun is when Manager, at the end, says Rosa didn’t have a great outcome with her family because then Klara says, “Everyone in the house was very kind to me [ . . . ] It was the best home for me. And Josie was the best teenager.” And it saddens me because she truly believes that, but as the reader knowing what I know and seeing what I saw, it’s just not true. Chrissie could hardly look at her more than half the time and Josie loved Klara… when it was convenient for her. And of course the Housekeeper thought of Klara as not much more than a vacuum.

And I understand Josie was sick, she was just a teenager who didn’t know whether she would live or die, but it’s heartbreaking because even after Josie gets strong again Klara is kind of passively kicked out of Josie’s room and moves into the Utility Room (which I’m pretty sure is just an attic) and Josie prepares for college, invites friends to sleep over, and moves on from Klara like she’s a toy Josie grew out of.

Klara definitely had it better than other AFs like Rosa and the boy AF she saw across the street from the store, but she didn’t really have it good, either. Chrissie defended Klara against Mr Capaldi that she should have her ‘slow fade’ but then she ended up fading on her own in a scrap yard. She doesn’t even get to fade amongst family, just tossed away like a malfunctioning microwave. And it’s so fucking sad because Klara was loved, but not like a human family member would ever have been, and it’s sadder because Klara believed she was in the best home only because she never knew better.

#I have a lot of feelings about this book #she was loved but she could have been loved better #klara and the sun #kazuo ishiguro

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