I felt that we should have learned more about Klara’s journey from when Josie began to get better, to when Klara came to her final resting place – I honestly flicked back a few pages thinking I had missed a whole chapter. The only criticism I have of the book is that Klara’s story finished too early. And how we can find love, wisdom, and kindness in unexpected places. It is about human love, but also the length at which some of us will go in order to preserve it, regardless of the hurt it may cause to others. But ultimately, Klara and The Sun is about finding love in unusual places and unusual beings. The book raises some difficult questions about human ethics – genetically modified humans – and also social decline in modern-day society – which one is inevitably the product of the other. Her naivety that that Sun’s nourishment will make her better, helping to reconcile Josie’s and Rick’s friendship when they fall out, being a friend to Mother and Josie’s father, and even agreeing to Mother’s plans if Josie does not make it, will both make and break your heart.

She is always trying to find a way to help Josie. It is Klara then who provides the human element to the story, the one with the heart. The Mother, though we learn later why, quite frankly comes across as heartless, not just to Klara and Rick but even to her own daughter. Genetically engineered children are given enhanced academic gifts but are certainly lacking in their ability to interact socially, and it leaves the young teenager having to cope with bouts of illness that leave her bedridden for days, she can be a little mean towards Klara and even cruel to her non- lifted friend, Rick. Josie, unlike her friend Rick, has been lifted, and we soon learn this comes with a risk. It has all the elements of modern-day, with children’s heads stuck in their oblongs and having minimal opportunities to socialize, but it’s very much a dystopian future. Just as the world Klara now inhabits seems alien, so too does the time period of this book. When Klara is finally bought by a young girl named Josie, and the cautious Mother, she finds herself living out in the remote countryside, with only one neighbour, Rick and his mother, and the no-nonsense Melania Housekeeper. She comes across as sensitive, willing to learn from the Manager in order to find an owner, but also a little naïve about humans in general – there is competition from newer AF models in the shop, B3s, and the Manager’s warnings about how children make and break their promises all the time. The book is narrated by Klara, an AF who has exceptional observational skills.

Klara and the sun review