Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Shiguro

 

A good friend recommended this book as a thinking piece.  I was enthralled from the first paragraph.  

An AF (Artificial Friend) named Klara waits in the front display window of the store where parents in the future come to buy their children a companion. Klara joins Jessie's family, a frail girl who lives with her working mother and a housekeeper, her parents having divorced after the death of her sister.  Klara's role is to observe Jessie and anticipate her needs.  In doing so, Klara learns how humans love one another - or don't.  Klara tells the story in her naive, curious voice, and I was challenged to figure out some odd names she gave to objects she saw being used by the family.  The story evolves as Jessie grows weaker and older.  Klara observes without judgment, accepting the changes in their lives, having served her purpose.  

I thought the end was unsatisfying, much like life can be unresolved and yet continues.  An interesting read that I'll be pondering for awhile.

Quotes:

"We're both of us sentimental.  We can't help it.  Our generation still carries the old feelings.  A part of us refuses to let go.  The part that wants to keep believing there's something unreachable inside each of us.  Something that's unique and won't transfer."

"...science has now proved beyond doubt there's nothing so unique...That people have been living with one another all this time, centuries, loving and hating each other, and all on a mistaken premise.  A kind of superstition we kept going while we didn't know better."

Published: 2021  Read: June 2023  Genre: Fiction

Being Dead is No Excuse - Gayden Metcalf

 A tongue in cheek look at Southern customs at funerals, with lots of recipes of funeral food.  A quick read I finished on my Chromebook using Hoopla - I may end up reading this way more often.  

Published: 2012   Read: June 2023   Genre: Humor

Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

I've missed reading just for enjoyment and this story was very satisfying.  Narrated by a curmudgeonly giant octopus in an aquarium, it is a story of living with grief and loss.  I was taken aback by the description of the main character, Tova, a 70 year old woman, that is portrayed over and over as old, feeble, frail, and needing help. Ugh!  Her story in a small town in Washington state near Puget Sounds intersects with a young man struggling to fit in the world.  A quick read, with a touching, uplifting message.

Quotes:

" All of these things had been stored away for her to pass along someday, relics to be carried up the branches of the family tree.  But the family tree stopped growing long ago, ts canopy thinned and frayed, not a single sap springing from the old rotting trunk.  Some trees aren't meant to spurt tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying."

Published: 2022  Read: June 2023  Genre: Fiction