Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

0:04 Hello, I'm Christina Young. I'm the host of Gloucester book club and tonight, I'm back. And we're going to be discussing Clara and the sun, which is a book by kazuo ishiguro. I'll be joined by some of my book club friends. We hope you enjoy. So a Clara is an artificial friend. She's a robot designed to be a playmate, two human children and she lives in a store where she watches customers come and go in every day and she observes every detail about them, she's hopeful that one day. Someone will choose her and she'll get to find a real home in friends and someone to love.

0:50 But will it ever happen? So before diving in, on this one, it might be helpful to know that this is a science fiction book. But its focus is narrowed down on the experiences of a single robot Clara and how Ai and Humanity, work together all. Sometimes, don't so you might remember kazuo ishiguro's, previous novel? Never Let Me Go which also explored similar themes of what it means to be human. And how In technology can be a slippery slope. So if you're not a regular science fiction reader don't worry.

1:27 This is a speculative book but with the feel of a literary novel. So let's just dive in and see what my friend from book club. Think about this. Is here tonight. I've got Zoey with me and I've got, Joe, is me both long-standing members of our book club and they both read this book. I just start off, Zoe asking you what you thought, because the setting of this book is sort of near future, isn't it? I think he quite a lot of ways, it feels kind of, you know, sort of familiar to us who are sort of current lived experience, did that setting feel realistic to you and you know what details of it, sort of stuck out.

2:11 Yes, I think a lot of really, I'm not sure if this book was written before after or during the pandemic. I know it's been published sometime within the last year. But what really struck me about the novel is, how a F's artificial friends, really created to befriend people because we're spending more and more time increasingly indoors in isolation, and especially the way that education is mentioned in the book Josie and other children who are learning have on line two. Shooters. And really their whole life is spent in front of a screen, but unlike us, and the way we're socializing at the moment doing this podcast and using social media in more, and more alienating to the point where people actually need to buy their own friends, and if their children, they need to buy them as products and I can see that happening.

3:01 You know, I really don't think that's too far off at all. I can see it happening to. And it's interesting, you bring up the subject to loneliness as well. So we because that was quite an amazing. Theme in this book, wasn't it? What about you, Joe? What did you think about that? Did it. Did it surprise you to see that? The AFS could actually feel lonely as well? Well, kind of in a way, I suppose you don't really think about it. In case of robot to accept that Clara is a very unusual robot who's got incredible powers of observation, but she did learn from her observation.

3:33 For example, she observes how humans, love, and during the course of the novel, we discover that she's herself Has learned how to love and to make the sacrifices that love fucking involves. So, she was a very special than artificial friend from learning how to be human, is to learn how to be lonely. So yes, I agree that, that was possible. Her loneliness is suckered by being chosen by Josie and her mum, and rather than me left in the store for longer her problem, solved by Josie, picking her, as well as her solving these problems.

4:10 Mmm. Okay. Do you guys think that she'd been programmed to be like that? Or was it something that developed because of her programming? I'll be interested to see what you think on this job because for me, as you were talking there and thinking about loneliness, but saying how Clara is such a special robot because she's learned all these emotions that we consider to be really human and make human life worthwhile. That is friendship that would love sacrifice caring for one another part of me wonders.

4:41 Is whether these artificial friends in order to become so successful in the first place, surely must have been programmed. So how do these features that we desire so much in human beings? So at what point do we draw the line? Because I think there's no way that an artificial friend could be successful particularly for children because we know that children and young adults are so good at Sensing any falsehoods, you know, they tell it how it is, a lot of the time. So I think these artificial friends really actually would have been programmed and maybe just the other AFC in the store that Clara were in, were actually just really naive and they were just a bunch of robots.

5:21 Who was heard to say that the other artificial friends are just as intelligent as Clara, but we don't see many other friends in the novel and I guess, like, we are in a humans are, you know, there are people that have certain skills. Eels that are more refined and other people. And so it was almost like reflected in these, a is Wilson it. That's that's um, seemed more intelligent. Less intelligent, had more abilities in one area and lesser in another it. That was quite interesting and I thought going back to Josie and her family.

5:49 What were your impressions of the family that takes Clara home? Well, not a very nice family. I think their fractured by the death of the older sister and by the parental fall It is quite obvious that the husband is against the idea of lifting, the children Chrissy the mom is in favor of it. Chris is a woman who's prepared to do whatever it takes to give her children advantage to compete. It's awful world that we're were introduced to the way the worst become so competitive and nasty. The fact that is not far in the future.

6:25 It's almost contemporary and it's but it's displayed. It's quite worrying. Really, very do you want to sort of explain what that is? So their listeners will know. Yeah sure. So one it kind of touches on some of the author's things that he's used before and novels like never let me go it's kind of a genetic modification. So in this world children really need to have a higher intelligence in order to get the best opportunities. The best universities best chance in life, which sounds quite normal, you know, doesn't sound too different from this world but really this novel takes it.

7:03 Step further, makes it a bit more dystopian. They go through a process which is called lifting and is incredibly dangerous yet. Josie's family is still oddly, some mummies still in favor of it and willing to put her children through this procedure, which ultimately, could even be fatal, mmm. We see in the case of her sister, what was really worrying, wasn't it? That bit and, and actually, in this novel Josie becomes ill as well, doesn't she? And we don't know when you're reading it, whether or not what's going to happen with Josie.

7:34 So we're not going to tell you this, there's out there, what does happen to Josie, but she is very poorly through their large part of this novel. There are some measurements of success that the adults in the story use, don't need to evaluate their children and their own parenting skills. Did you think about those Joe? Because, I mean, I'm a parent. You're a parent Zoe's, not yet a parent, but even if you want a parent, did you agree with the way that they kind of evaluated their children? And What we expected of them.

8:05 I don't think as a parent, you could possibly put your children or child through the treatment and with its risks, just purely to advance themselves. It's one thing to encourage them at school or to even go to the extent of your tutoring, them for things like the eleven plus or what have you. But in the case of the lifting we're talking about genetic modification the children at some point in their lives and we're not really clear on what point which carries The risk of serious illness or death.

8:36 Who would, who would take that challenge for their child? Isn't it better to have a happy child, socially effective, and having a child with emotional intelligence, which none of the lifted children appeared to have. It's better that sort of happy child and let them go on through life and Achieve what they can themselves without additional supplement. Yeah, I agree with that. So he, what did you think about these ethical dilemmas about You know, artificial intelligence really, and, and did this book raise any questions for you about that?

9:10 Did the humans acting an ethical or moral way regarding the, a is that they created. Yeah, it does make you think, I think that by introducing these a eyes but not giving them, the kind of names that we've been using throughout this discussion in the way, people would traditionally talk about artificial intelligence by calling it in Artificial friend and naming Clara, and the rest of the artificial friends that she comes across really gives them a human quality. And like you say, ironically, Clara has a high level of emotional intelligence.

9:48 Whether she's built in and program that way or whether she's learnt. It just threw her observations in the shop window before she was eventually purchased and the things that she learns when she moves in with her family. Does it matter? Whether it's a learned behavior or whether it's Night Behavior. We could argue the simple but human beings. I think this novel really blurs the line. And to me also raises quite some whirring questions about how we consider illness and death and perfection in human beings, you know, without trying to give too many spoilers away.

10:20 As you say Christina, we know that Joseph becomes ill. Yeah, I know that Clara is there initially to provide us some support through her illness and and to help care for her, you know, at what point Does the artificial friend supersede the human life when the human life is ill? That's quite a whirring question as well. Isn't it definitely is one of the things that struck me about it was that when these artificial friends are no longer needed by the children, the children outgrow them, don't they?

10:50 You know, they say that age but it's it's like your favorite toy. You tend about grow it over time and, you know, once Josie had become a teenager, she was no longer really interested in Cara anymore and it was the way they just Like talk to Clara on the Upper Floor, put her in a sort of utility cupboard, you know? And she was just there watching. But nobody ever interacted with. I felt really sad about her, but that's me transferring. My human kind of emotions onto this robot. What did you think of all that?

11:21 Joe? Seems to me that the, the lifting process removes from these children consciences. When they've used up their artificial friend and has served his purpose. Taking speed dumped in a Cupboard with the vacuum cleaner or whatever abandoned, while staying to go on to their Promised Land of good employment and higher salaries. What really struck me and I hope this isn't a cross comparison is, is this not the way that we treat our elderly loved ones? Some of our family, as well. When they stopped becoming as usable, in a social sense, in a familial sense, is this not how we Parker a lot of our loved ones eventually, as they age that I don't know, did anybody?

12:03 Stroll that comparison. I mean, for me, I thought that wow, actually, you wouldn't do this to a robot. So why would you do it to a human or a family member as well? Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. With that story. It does feel like that doesn't it and I think as people get older you start to feel it more and you get into your 60s and 70s, I think. Yeah, you do sort of feel like you're no longer really massively part of society. It's kind of going on around you personally. I think that That's absolutely true.

12:33 And I do think that whether you're a lifted child or not lifted child, you outgrow your toys, you know, and they get dumped, don't they? They tend to, you know, get dumped in a corner and this is kind of what happened. This is definitely what happened with poor old Clara based on tolerance observations. What did you think of the way? That people actually socialized in this book? Think about the adults and the children in this actually was it healthy what they were doing. It's always really awkward from the offset.

13:05 It's very hard to judge and understand human emotions through Clara's perception of them and I found it really interesting hard to read a first certainly and that's why I'm glad we had this book to read a book club and I stuck with it because initially, the way human interactions of any interactions with the book in the novel are described by Clara is through this robot perception. You know, she doesn't The Sara Lee have the vocabulary, we would use to discuss human interactions but yet by the time it gets to her actually being adopted by a family and seeing some real life human interactions are just as stilted and just as fake.

13:45 So maybe this is the language of the future. Maybe this is how all people interact in the future, but as a reader, it takes a little while to get into that universe and to get into that. Weirdly kind of detached world. I know, I feel so to Joe. Did it say, You about this book because it certainly scared me when I was thinking, I can actually feel see a situation where so sort of more removed from each other, you know, and it's happening now, isn't it in the pandemic? You know, everything's happening online, we're not socializing as much.

14:17 I could actually just it scares me a little bit but you know, that is something that I could foresee. Yeah, and I agree, I think that's probably part of what's at issue arose, trying to warn us about he did. Did he say in his Nobel, Laureate lecture? He gave ran by the time he was thinking up, Karen the son. He says in the lecture that he did the things he's most worried about for Humanity, artificial intelligence genetically, editing and pollution. Pollution comes into the book as well. So he's trying to warn us of the path.

14:54 We're going down, is a dangerous one and slippery slope. As Zoe says, we have slipped into that pattern of socializing online and through social media rather than face-to-face and in a more human with inverted commas way. Yeah. Become a bit more robotic in our social. So it does does feel sort of like if you go as vision of the future feels plausible. For what we're saying here. Yeah, I think so. I mean, maybe not to the extremes that there seems to be a great level of isolation. I don't know whether it's because Josie's family live in a prairie, kind of start a landscape where it seems very very sparse, very rural and their people very few and far between but even so you can make the comparisons to a.

15:42 I that's been developed even now I would say one of the things I can't not ask you about and I is what was your reaction when you read that? The plan that Cara was to be Clara was to be turned into an avatar of Josie. Happy that just blew my mind. Really? Would you ever consider doing the same for one of your loved ones? No, absolutely not. It drew so many questions for me. It got my brain going certainly because it makes you think about who exactly the self is. What makes you human? What Makes You Christina?

16:20 What makes you Joe? If we could take all these recordings One Day, Christie that we can somehow stick them all. Together and make you you, it still wouldn't be you but yeah, it's so hard to put your finger on exactly why that's an ethical and why it feels wrong it just does. But of course, as we learn in a book that will what makes us individual his, our hearts human heart is the repository of our individuality, in our her feelings, and our emotions, and all the rest of it, our conscience, if you like is in our heart, that's, that's the point that she is trying to make his Be very careful with tinkering with.

17:00 Your makeup. What makes you a human? What makes your heart? It's too dangerous to fiddle with it. So again, another warning he did it. He has said that he has written the same novel over and over again, throughout his career to tell us what it means to be human. But in fact, I think this novel rather than telling us what it means to be human, is actually telling us what it means to love. That's what Clara learns to do. Yes. And she puts it into effect in her attempts to save Joseph. He's getting much closer to the important side of what it is to be human when she learned to emulate.

17:36 Josie didn't see Clara dead and that was through her close observation of Josie. Kind of shaped her understanding of what it was to be alive and human as well. I think, didn't it? Joey that's not seem to be what was going on. So she was kind of putting all those bits together and learning them, which was very clever of her. Let's talk a little bit about what Clara's relationship to the One was all about and to Nature because, you know, Clara is your battery driven door, she's solar-powered. Basically, you know, she gets her energy from the Sun.

18:12 And so if there's no sunlight, her battery runs down, so you sort of Revere's, the sun, doesn't she as a God? What did you think about that? All that part of the book was that just quite sweet and Charming or I don't know. I think it struck me as very Much more than just I'm a robot, I need to charge myself on the Sun from day one. She describes the Sun's light as nourishment and really something that's good for her soul as well. Even though she doesn't have the terms to even think about whether or not she has a soul or describe it, you get the sense that not only, she seeking the warmth and the light to power her in battery, that there's something much deeper about the Sun and also it's what humans have done for years.

19:00 The very start of civilization must have developed itself around the warmth of the Sun and everything depends on whether or not, you can get that light and that nourishment. So I think it really added a spiritual element as well. Hmm, honey always have souls. Do they have religion? Because I think Clara is religion. Is the sun? Yes, I would agree with you and Joe, I think, you know, because she was desperately trying to stay Josie from this. Unknown illness, which we never really clear what's going on in the book.

19:33 But we know that Joseph's very ill and she decides that the sun is the thing to do that. Well, I agree with Zoe. I think the as with primitive man the worshipping of the Sun as the origin of everything and all this business with a lining up there, Stonehenge type stones and actually been to all these places where there's evidence that primitive man basically worship. Her son and thought everything, derived from the energy of the sun, it's like kind of like Farrah is the same stage of evolution as primitive, man.

20:10 She's learned enough about human behavior from her observations that she's now sort of developing in a way that mankind did thought that, you know, that's all very interesting stuff, isn't it? And, you know, it just stretch your imagination when you're reading the book about that bit about my son and her try. To communicate with the sun in order to save Josie and it's, and it just showed you her naivety as well. Because although she's this really sophisticated robot, she is still very naive and childlike, isn't she in her, you know, in her reasoning about some things?

20:48 So I thought that was quite well. Portrayed, really in the book. Do you remember, she's mother in the book? Or I think he's called Chrissy. Josie's mother has got this plan. Hasn't she been? Nothing happens to Josie. If Josie does die, that she's going to replace Josie with Clara where you don't find out about that right at the. Beginning of the book do is sort of a bit of a way in but Clara goes off with mother on this. Excursion, how did you feel about all of that at the time? So he did it make you think about mother in a different way after that I'm sure.

21:27 Yeah, take a deep breath. Inhale, I still have so many questions about that now I mean, although I'm not a parent myself, I am kind of echoing some of the earliest sentiments that you and Joe had which is how can one child be so easily replaceable. But another even if they have the perfect mannerisms and and learned behaviors of a child, they're still not the organic thing. They're still not the original child, but I guess grief and The possibility of losing someone can maybe distort your mind and I'm trying to be devil's advocate for mother's, not my favorite character, but thinking about it and guessing whether she had, you know, if I had to be a devil's advocate for her, could we say that, you know, the loss of one child is just made a really pragmatic about death and she's just possibly preparing for another who knows.

22:18 Not what I agree with anyway, know it all seems very weird, didn't it? That bit, what did you think? Look Joe. What are your thoughts about it again? I don't didn't like, Chrissy. I didn't agree with anything. She was doing. Yeah, that those hope that sort of set of scenes where, you know, Josie was taken along to that guy who was going to model her, make an avatar of her and actually make her Clara. It was it was all very that made me feel very uncomfortable in the book. I didn't like that bit really at all, it's very weird.

22:54 So, Would you say to anybody, who's out there listening? Who's in a book club and is thinking of reading this, or maybe not in a book club? Maybe just thought has been thinking about, shall I shan't I so would you recommend it? So yes, I would. But I would say stick with it, like I said, initially there's some great topics and some great discussion you can see much how much already. The three of us have have gathered from it, but that doesn't mean it comes in a nice little easy available package, you know, you Really have to stick with it for a while in Clara's.

23:28 Well, then information is not presented to you very quickly and very easily. So I would recommend it for anybody or book clubs who are interested, but also stick with it, you know, be prepared to perhaps stretch and challenge yourself because I nearly gave up with it at one point. Yeah, you didn't know. It's got a lot to say. I've been say, it's probably not my favorite book of Kashi, OSU grows. Novels my absolutely love, never. Viggo. And I was spending a lot of my time reading it. Comparing it with never.

24:00 Let me go, I'm finding it a bit wanting. Unfortunately, what about you, Joe? What's your thoughts about it being reading? You know, reading it as a book club read. Well, yes, I'm sure it is a good reasonable Club has waited but I agree with you that compared with never, let me go, it's disappointing. Yes, in my opinion, it's not as good, it doesn't have the same kick in the guts that never He go as. But if you want to develop the themes in never, let me go, then it's great book for thinking further about it.

24:32 Yeah, I think so too. So to finally to kind of finish off, I'm going to ask you both the same question in the end who seemed more human to you, was it the humans or the artificial friends. Well, compared, if you take a lifted person and Clara, I would say definitely Clara and you did learn how to be human. But as if In the book that he wrote for me, was Rick. The unlifted normal boy. Yeah, he was great. Wasn't the I like to bring very easy, obviously, loved Josie and wanted to help Clara to save her.

25:09 Even if you didn't understand what on Earth's going on and he had put a lot of faith into our has Intelligence. If you like, depends what you mean by human but they worry. I'm not going to Pat alone for a long time but it actually made me think not only about some of the more beautiful sides of humanity that we've been talking about love, and religion and worship. But Also, humans can be horrible. Horrible people, sometimes? And it said, they didn't surprise me that even after everything she did for the family that Claire has left on the scrap Heap.

25:39 Yeah. Depends. If we're talking about, who's more human in the sense of who's more compassionate than definitely Clara. But human nature can be very evil to and I think unfortunately, the humans in the world and the family that eventually left, her aren't too dissimilar from a lot of humans today. Absolutely. And that's very wise words, they're from sorry there at the end. We hope you've enjoyed listening to this and will be back again soon. Thank you so much for listening to us again. Next month, we'll be back to talk about the paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, and we're really looking forward to talking about that one.

26:24 In the meantime, have a very happy new year and keep reading.