Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro treats us lucky readers to yet another take on a dystopian future in Klara and the Sun. And once again, as in Never Let Me Go (2005) he approaches his subject obliquely. He withholds details of world events and resulting dislocations, giving only quick, almost throwaway indications here and there. The main indicator is that Klara, the first-person narrator of the title, is an AF, or Artificial Friend, a very life-like robot blessed with an AI-like ability to learn....
May 09, 2021
"How to Disappear" by Bruna Gomes
Bruna Gomes takes a plunge into the deep end of the pool with her debut work, How to Disappear. Her approach will take an adjustment on the part of readers, but once your adjustments are in place, there are rewards for you here, rewards that promise a bright future for Gomes.The author does a superb job engaging her readers in the heroine’s stream-of-consciousness internal dialogue. This half clear-eyed, half delusional narrative carries all aspects of the story with it. In fact, while Gomes focusses...
May 06, 2021
"My Year Abroad" by Chang-Rae Lee
Two thirds of the way through Chang-Rae Lee’s thrill ride of a novel, “My Year Abroad,” protagonist Tiller Bardmon, midway through his college years, leads off a chapter this way: “Question: What happens to you when you’ve gone way too far? Not just off trail, not even bushwhacking, but venturing into a region where it turns out the usual physics don’t much apply. … To look back at myself during my stay at Drum Kappagoda’s lodge is to slough off every notion of whatever made me me.”Lee spends...
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