Enjoy these thought-provoking novel by two skilled authors whose work is not only lyrical, suspenseful, and a joy to read, but which also stays with you long afterwards making you question your assumptions and values.
Klara and the Sun
320 pages
Knopf
(2021)
Winter is here, and when all the skiing, snow shoeing, and sledding are done, it’s time to relax indoors, find a comfy chair, and settle down with a good book, especially during the quiet, owl-light hours of evening.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s most recent book, Klara and the Sun, is perfectly written for such a time that allows to read thoughtfully and reflect. Like a well-aged wine whose taste is layered with many overtones, this book is filled with subtle feelings and ideas that will cause you to think deeply about what the author is saying concerning our world.
Even though Klara and the Sun is technically a science fiction, the world it depicts is not that different from our own: the environment is being harmed, material inequality is obvious, and parents go to extremes to give their child the advantage. Like the author, we’re already questioning the long-term effects of some of our technology: the Internet, genetically modified organisms, and computer data gathering, to name just a few. (Read the non-fiction book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by historian Yuval Noah Halavi for a disturbing take on where technology may be leading us.) In fact, there is already a field of robotics called “affective computing” in which robots are programmed to read human emotions. After all, we want robots who can respond to how we are feeling. But will robots eventually have their own feelings?
When the story opens, Klara is displayed in a store window along with other AFs. She is an exceptionally advanced AF, or artificial friend, who is extremely observant: “the more I watched, the more I wanted to learn, and . . . I became puzzled, then increasingly fascinated by the more mysterious emotions passers-by would display in front of us.” Yet she learns about humans and their emotions without passing judgment on them. She is the friend we would all love to have: always there, always encouraging. Her primary goal is “to be as kind and helpful an AF as possible.” But she is, after all, just a robot, and robots are by definition less than human. One woman in the book compares her to a vacuum cleaner; teenage boys discuss throwing her across the room like a football to see if she lands on her feet. Humans can be insensitive, egotistical, and spiteful, but Klara notes that, even though “they have rough ways, . . . they may not be so unkind. They fear loneliness and that’s why they behave as they do.”
After some setbacks, a 14-year-old girl named Josie finally selects Klara to be her AF. In the story, AFs are bought as companions for “lifted” teens, those whose parents have chosen to have them undergo genetic editing in order to give them an academic edge. Because these teens are so advanced, they are schooled individually, at home on computers. To prevent loneliness, they have monthly “interaction meetings” with other lifted teens, and the rest of the time they have their AFs.
Throughout the book, Josie suffers from an unnamed illness that perhaps has been caused by the genetic editing, if the guilt her mother feels is any indication. It becomes Klara’s mission to help Josie get better by supplicating the Sun, in whom she has unwavering faith. Before being chosen by Josie, Klara witnessed the Sun bestow his “special nourishment” on a beggar man on the sidewalk who appeared to have died, but later awoke. As part of this mission, Klara becomes convinced she must make an offering to the Sun—she must destroy a particularly nasty piece of construction equipment that emits dust and smoke into the atmosphere, thus blocking the Sun’s rays. The lengths to which she goes to accomplish this goal demonstrate her unconditional love for Josie.
Ultimately, Klara proves very adept at interpreting human feelings, but does she have feelings of her own? After reading this book, you may consider Klara the apotheosis of humanity, what we would look like if we became our better selves.
Kazuo Ishiguro is an award-winning author well known for his deeply nuanced exploration of feelings. In his 2017 acceptance speech when he won the Nobel prize in Literature, he said, “. . . in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?” Klara and the Sun is a story about what it feels like to love someone, and at the end of the day, that’s what makes us all the best human being we can be.
In the Gloaming
288 pages
Simon & Schuster
(2000)
A collection of short stories, In the Gloaming has no robots, but like Klara and the Sun it plumbs the depths of human thoughts and feelings. The title suggests the owl-light time, since “gloaming” is the Scottish term for twilight, when daylight and darkness briefly overlap. According to folk lore, it’s the time when humans, who are not yet done with the day, may encounter spirits, who are just coming out for the night.
“In the Gloaming” is the first of ten tales from this collection and the one from which the book takes its name. A mother and her dying son finally begin to connect during their after-dinner conversations. “I always though it hurt you somehow that the day was over,” he says to her, “but you said it (the gloaming) was a beautiful time because for a few moments the purple light made the whole world look like the Scottish highlands on a summer night.” “Yes,” she responds, “As if the earth was covered with heather.” Later, she observes that “the dusk worked its spell,” and she began “living her life for the twilight moment when his (her son’s) eyes would begin to glow, the signal that he was stirring into consciousness,” after his illness-induced torpor of the day.
Their conversations make her think how “Parents and children were all captive audiences to each other; in view of this, it was amazing how little comprehension there was of one another’s story.” While she sits beside him in his wheelchair, she observes that as they talk, “he became more like his old self . . . . He became sweeter, the way he’d been as a child, before he began to gird himself with layers of irony and clever remarks.” “When they sat quietly together she felt as close to him as she ever had. It was still him in there, inside the failing shell.” During their final discussions, she ultimately realizes that it is her son, rather than her workaholic husband, who has been the love of her life.
When the title story “In the Gloaming” was first published in 1993, it appeared in The New Yorker and immediately inspired a made-for-television HBO movie directed by Christopher Reeve; the mother, Janet, is superbly acted by Glenn Close.
The author of these short stories is Alice Elliott Dark, whose last name sounds like a pseudonym that portends spooky stories. But they’re not scary, unless you find missed opportunities, poor judgment, and unwelcome surprises to be scary. Rather, they are portraits of everyday people whom we come to know deeply by the end of the story. The author delves into the psyche of men as well as women, teens all the way to seniors. One of the stories is even told from the viewpoint of an entire community; the final story, “Watch the Animals,” is narrated in the first personal plural “we” point of view.
And who hasn’t known a judgmental young teen, such as the young girl Frannie in “Dreadful Language”? She curses her mother for divorcing her father, then marrying again for financial security. But as an adult, Frannie comes to see that she herself is in a similar situation. She has become just like the mother she always disdained. Then she knows that some words—like regret, shame, and loneliness—are far worse than any four-letter words.
Then there’s the wronged wife, Helen, in “The Secret Spot,” who fantasizes about getting revenge on Julia, the woman she thinks tried to steal her husband. When they meet by chance in Central Park, Helen swoops into action, casually, but with savage purpose, rubbing Julia’s nose in what she believes to be her perfect marriage. The “secret spot,” is the place where Helen and Nick got engaged, but it’s actually Strawberry Fields, within Central Park. Countless people troop through there every day. And it’s not the only thing which Helen is deluded about. In one of the most twisting and devastatingly tense stories of the collection, Helen comes to wonder if the husband whom she prizes so much might be someone she doesn’t even know.
It’s generally acknowledged that short stories are more difficult to write than novels, since the author has less space in which to accomplish her goals. But Alice Elliott Dark’s range of characterization proves that she is deeply intuitive, and this narrative skill combined with what has been called her “pitch-perfect prose” establishes her as a powerful storyteller. The collection is considered a “contemporary classic.” She’s been compared to other noteworthy short-story writers like Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro, and “In the Gloaming” was selected by John Updike for inclusion in the anthology of Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Not surprisingly, Dark is a professor of English in the MFA program at Rutgers University as well as being the prize-winning author of two novels and two short story collections.