MixedStrange HorizonsAs in many of his other novels, Ishiguro is rigorous in presenting the world through a limited viewpoint ... If the background is vague, however, what is in the foreground, the emotional impact of this upon the central characters, is totally convincing and very powerful ... There are so many mixed motives, hidden schemes, and misunderstandings threading their way through the novel that the only possible consequence of their exposure would seem to be things falling apart. But right at the end, Ishiguro bottles it. This is a story that, contrary to the logic of everything that has gone before, ends as it started, in sunshine. This is feeble, unearned, and fatally undermines the novel, as if his characters have gone through the tragedy of learning without actually learning of tragedy. In places, Klara and the Sun is as good, as moving, as enthralling as Ishiguro at his best, but the return to sunshine at the very end makes a nonsense of all that.
David Mitchell
PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksFive sections, five voices, five narrative styles — each one starting light, often humorous, but getting darker...The novel works, as all of Mitchell’s novels have worked, because we start out reading one thing and end up reading something very different indeed.
