I never thought I’d say this, but KLARA AND THE SUN is too mysterious. By the end of the book, I’m still not sure I solved all the mysteries. Kazuo Ishiguro alludes; he doesn’t give answers.

Klara, the narrator, is a robot. Ishiguro is pretty clear about that from the beginning, but he still leaves a lot of unknowns about her. What does she look like? Someone about halfway through the book calls her cute, whatever that means. Is she intelligent? Again, he doesn’t say so outright, but throughout the book Ishiguro speaks of her keen observational abilities. I suppose that means she is. But if she looks and acts like a human being, which it sounds like she does, how could her owner store her in a utility room or leave her in a junkyard?

Klara’s owner, 14-year-old Josie, is tired and weak almost all of the time. She is sick to the point of death. Ishiguro never says why. But he does allude to the answer, of course, once the reader gets well into the book. It seems that children who are “lifted” often get sick like this. But he never says what "lifted" is. For my own satisfaction, I assume it means that they were made smarter.

Klara’s job, as Josie‘s companion, is to watch over her. So Klara innocently observes and accepts everything almost always without question while the reader questions everything and tries to figure it out. I found it frustrating.

The title, KLARA AND THE SUN, lets you know that the sun is important to Klara. It’s rays rejuvenate her. I imagine that Klara’s sitting in the sun‘s rays is like my plugging my iPhone to its charger.

Because Klara realizes her life depends on the sun, she worships it. She also talks to it, probably the way people talk to God. She is sure the sun can work miracles, and in the end maybe it does. Ishiguro never makes this clear.

KLARA AND THE SUN bored me. It’s not as bad as Ishiguro’s last book, but I still know he can do better. Let’s hope he writes a more adult book next time.