Followup:
Read it today (Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun). It was every bit as good as Never Let Me Go.
Just as in his previous novel, about halfway through, the reader discovers what's really going on, and by the time it's revealed, the reader has already figured it out. I was actually a little disappointed, because I felt that particular twist was a little too obvious and cliché. But I later realized that was just me nitpicking what was clearly a masterwork of English literature.
If anything, it might be even better than Never Let Me Go, simply because there is so much more going on. The narrator is an AI, but the story is every bit as much about the humans the AI interacts with as the AI itself. So it's simultaneously a story that asks whether the young can truly understand love, a philosophical treatise on the role of humanity in a fully automated society, a meditation on how society might reorganize itself (not necessarily for the better) in a world in which most labor is no longer necessary, and an exploration of the lengths parents might go to in order to ensure that their children are accepted as the lucky few, the elite, even if that requires medical procedures that might come with severe risks.
It's part Brave New World, part Gattaca, part Romeo and Juliet, part Bicentennial Man. But for all the Huxley and Asimov, it's unmistakably Ishiguro. Although, slightly different. A little more upbeat than what might be expected from the recognized master of melancholy.
But it's not just a love story, or a science-fiction (like the previous book, just barely) novel, or a political statement. It's also, on some level, a religious experience. If Phillip K. Dick asked about electric sheep, one of the questions Ishiguro raises is, How does an android pray?
One of the interesting things Ishiguro does is describe how the narrator sees the world in a way that makes it clear she, as an AI, sees existence very differently than humans do. Her vision is compartmentalized, fragmented, almost like a wall of TV screens, but they sometimes blend together into a single view when she is focused on one important thing, only to break apart into many different views as she becomes disoriented. It's very effective in making the reader understand that he/she is not intended to read this book as a normal human, but as something other.
I have to admit, until last year, I was relatively unaware of Ishiguro's genius. He wrote that one book that I had a faint idea had been well-received and turned into a film. That was about it. But I was so blown away by Never Let Me Go, that I immediately put a hold on Klara and the Sun, and when I discovered that there were dozens of people ahead of me for the local library's three digital copies, I drove to B&N and bought my first new release hardcover since Harry Potter.
I have to say that this man is clearly one of the best authors of the past century. The Nobel was well-earned. Definitely a recommend. I read this novel in one evening, and immediately passed it off to someone else, and said, "Don't start this tonight, because it's too late, but read this; it's one of the best books I've ever read." If you haven't read him yet, please do. For me, I'm going to go back and read The Remains of the Day, that book I was only vaguely aware of until now. Then I'll probably read the rest of the Ishiguro oeuvre.
