Harriet Devine's Blog

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

What a wonderful book.

If you visit here from time to time, you may have heard me say that I don't like science fiction. It's quite true that as a genre it doesn't attract me at all - I read a lot of it in my twenties and was happy to have left it behind. But recently I've had to revise my thinking, as a result of two books that were chosen by my book group. The first was Ian McEwan's brilliant Machines Like Me, and the other a classic, Asimov's The Naked Sun. I enjoyed them both enormously. If you know these novels, you will realise that they both deal with the theme of humanoid robots. And so does Klara and the Sun, which I've just finished.

Klara, who narrates the novel, never refers to herself as a robot, and nor does anyone else apart from a rude woman encountered by chance. Klara is a solar-powered AF - an Artificial Friend - created to keep a child company. This has become necessary in the unspecified time in which the novel is set - not all that distant or different from our own. Children no longer attend school, but are taught remotely on their 'oblongs', as Klara calls them, so social interaction is very limited. An AF can help them learn to socialise before they go to university.

AFs are humanoid, but not to the extent of McEwan's or Asimov's, which are indistinguishable; here, people have no problem in recognising them. We don't have an exact description of Klara, but we gather that she's quite small - presumably the size of a typical young teenager - and has dark hair and eyes. As for the world she describes, she transmits it to us as she perceives it, and it's sometimes up to the reader to deduce the phenomenon she's reporting on. Her perceptual and cognitive abilities are superb, though the world she sees seems to be divided into boxes - normally these are aligned so she's not aware of them, but in situations of pressure or emotional strain, they get misaligned so that people or objects are split into sections and no longer in their correct places.

Emotional strain for an AF? Do AF's have feelings? Klara certainly thinks she does: 'I believe I have many feelings. The more I observe the more feelings become available to me.' Observation is Klara's strong point, stronger, according to the woman in charge of the store where she lives before she is bought, than any AF she has ever sold. One day, outside the window, she sees a man and woman meet in the street and fly into each others' arms. Manager, as Klara calls her, explains that they probably haven't seen each other for a long time, but Klara is puzzled - they should be happy but look as if they are upset. Manager explains, 'Sometimes at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness'. Klara will add this to her repertoire of emotions and feelings.

Klara becomes the companion to a young girl called Josie. She is clever and kind, but she suffers from an un-named illness which sometimes confines her to bed for days or even weeks at a time. It appears that the illness can be fatal - it has already killed her sister - and there is no cure. As for the cause, the reader is left to work out that is must be connected with the fact that Josie and her sister, like most children from wealthy families, had been 'lifted'. Presumably this is a form of genetic engineering designed to enhance their abilities, but it clearly has potentially fatal drawbacks. Meanwhile, it has become a useful weapon for lifted children to taunt the unlifted. One such is Josie's best friend and next door neighbour Rick, a boy with high natural intelligence who will nevertheless find it almost impossible to get into a university, as his mother had not opted for lifting. Josie and Rick love each other, and have plans for some kind of future together. But Josie's mother ('The Mother' to Klara), only too aware that Josie may not have a future at all, is making plans which, it turns out, involve Klara.

Klara grows close to both Rick and Josie, and wants to find a way to help the young girl to get well. Her solution is simple. She will ask for help from the Sun. While in the store she had observed something that makes her believe this will work She saw a beggar and his dog lying immobile in a doorway for many hours, and assumed they had died: 'I felt sadness then', she says, 'despite it being a good thing that they’d died together, holding each other and trying to help one another'. But next morning, when the Sun's rays fall on them, they both get up, apparently miraculously brought back to life. Klara has watched the setting Sun out of Josie's bedroom window, and believes 'he' lives inside a distant farmer's barn. So, with the help of Rick, she makes a challenging expedition to the barn (challenging because she's not good at navigating uneven ground) to beg the Sun to heal Josie as he had healed the beggar and his dog. Without any outside help, Klara has invented her own religion, and rejoices every day to see 'the loveliness of the Sun’s nourishment falling over us'. 

This beautiful, engrossing novel raises so many questions. Klara's innocent, childlike view gives a fresh and often revealing perspective of the novel's world, one so worryingly close to our own. Above all, though, as many reviewers have noted, it questions what it means to be human. Klara is striving to be as human as possible, but a man she meets tells her that the human heart is so multi-layered that no AF could ever achieve its innermost workings. However, she displays more love, loyalty and faith than many of the humans in her life. They, on their side, seem fond of Klara and include her fully in their lives, but when we find out The Mother's plans for her, and discover what her eventual destination is, it's clear that, despite their affection for her, to them she is essentially just a machine. It's impossible not to love Klara, and though the ending is not unexpected, it's very sad.

Don't let this put you off, though. It's a magnificent novel. It's been described as Ishiguru's masterpiece, not something I can comment on as I took an unreasonable dislike to his writing many years ago, having failed to take to one of his novels (can't remember which). But now I'm anxious to make up the gap and have already started Never Let Me Go. Watch this space.

 

 

 

 

Girl Reading

The is 'The Hammock' (or 'Le Hamac') by the inimitable James (or Jacques Joseph) Tissot (1836-1902). He was best known as a society painter, first in Paris and then in London. Several of his paintings have appeared on here over the years, but this of course is not a painting but an etching. Lovely peaceful scene. 

Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson

I've been an avid reader of Peter Swanson's novels since I encountered The Kind Worth Killing back in 2015. I've read them all and given them glowing reviews - most recently the admirable Rules for Perfect Murders, which I reviewed on Shiny last year (here). Now here's his latest, just published. How does it measure up?

If you're not familiar with Swanson, you should know that he writes psychological thrillers - very twisty ones - and each a standalone. This one is about a young woman named Abigail Baskin. She lives in New York City. When we first meet her she is in a state of nervous shock. She's just spotted a man who she has recently spent a very enjoyable but illicit night with in a holiday hotel. Why illicit? Because Abigail is about to get married and the holiday hotel is where she's having her hen night. They had exchanged fake names and not given each other any contact details, so she's shocked later that day to discover an email from him - how did he know her address? 

Abigail's fiancé Bruce is very rich. He's also, as she admits herself, boring. Is she marrying him for his money? She would deny this fervently, though she admits it will be helpful for her career in the arts. She actually likes the fact that he's boring - she's had too many affairs with men who certainly weren't, and they haven't ended well. So she's looking forward to a comfortable, peaceful life with Bruce. But Bruce has a strict moral code, and if he were to discover her one-night stand with the man she knows only as Scottie, he will never forgive her, and the marriage will be off.

Fortunately she feels confident, after agreeing to meet with Scottie, that he won't get in her way or make trouble for her. So the wedding goes ahead. Now it's time for the honeymoon. Bruce hasn't told her where this is to take place, but as they set off in his car, he tells her that the place they are going does not allow phones or TVs or any means of getting online. 'It's all part of the experience', he says. After a long drive north they arrive at a small private airport and soon they are up in the air and as they cross the blue ocean, Abigail is excited.'This is my life now' she thinks, 'one adventure after another'. Little does she know what adventures await her on the tiny island.

The place seems perfect at first. Bruce describes it enthusiastically:

There are great walks on the island. There's an indoor swimming pool that has to be seen to be believed. There's a spa, but most of the activities are like camp activities for grown-ups. You don't have to do them, but if you want to, there's archery, and sailing on the pond, and an art studio. You can paint pictures and do pottery....Personally I like the lodge. You can sit by the fire and read. They bring you drinks. It's pretty sweet.

All goes well for a few days, though Abigail is rather disconcerted to find there's only one other woman on the island. The other guests are wealthy men like Bruce. The staff are assiduous and welcoming, the cabin is lovely, and she looks forward to a relaxing stay. But the some strange things start happening and Abigail's honeymoon escalates into a nightmare.

To say more would be to give too much away. I must admit that I found some of the final revelations a little implausible, but what do I know? Maybe such things do happen in this mad world. In any case I did enjoy this book - Swanson is a skilful writer and very good at building tension and planting doubts in the reader's mind. You may or may not disapprove of Alison's behaviour, though I suspect she's not alone in opting for a final fling before her marriage. If you're thinking of doing this, you'll probably have second thoughts after reading this book. Never mind the final denouement, the guilt and anxiety she suffers before the wedding are almost unbearable.

So is this a morality tale? Not at all. But in addition to the puzzles and the thriller element, it gives a rather worrying picture of the sort of things men with too much money may enjoy. Enough said. Thanks, Faber, for the review copy.

 

 

The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths

'The nighthawk is a nocturnal bird of the subfamily Chordeilinae, within the nightjar family, Caprimulgidae, native to the western hemisphere', Wikipedia tells me. But I doubt if anyone will think this is going to be a book about birds. It is, of course, the 13th Ruth Galloway mystery by the wonderfully productive Elly Griffiths. As well as this series she's also written several Brighton Mysteries, which I haven't really taken to, a brilliant standalone called The Stranger Diaries, and The Postscript Murders which I didn't like. And she's the author of another quite different series under a pseudonym. So you'd think she might be running out of steam by now on her oldest and most popular series, which features archeologist Dr Ruth Galloway and her friend and occasional lover Detective Inspector Harry Nelson. But no. Bodies are still being discovered in north Norfolk, both ancient (calling on Ruth's expertise) and modern (calling on Harry and his team). 

The Night Hawks of the title are a team of detectorists with a particular interest in ancient burials. Their name comes from the fact that they prefer to do their metal detecting at nighttime - not that they do anything exactly illegal, but they prefer not to be disturbed. At the start of the novel, they've just happened on what appears to be an Anglo Saxon burial on the beach, complete with skeleton and ancient weaponry - but one of the team has also spotted a body in the sea. So Ruth and Nelson are both called to the scene.

Ruth, who had left Norfolk for Cambridge in the previous novel, is now back at the University of North Norfolk, and has in fact become the Head of the archaeology department. She has a new colleague, the rather irritating and slightly suspect David Brown, who insists on accompanying her to the newly uncovered site. The police are there too - Nelson, of course, plus his trusted colleague Judy - and her Druid husband Cathbad has also got involved, as he's a part-time Night Hawk too. Ruth is very wary of metal detectorists in general, believing they sometimes mess up important archeological evidence, though these ones seem to have been very careful.

Soon, in addition to the original dead body - quickly identified as a young local policeman - there is a double murder in gloomy Black Dog Farm, quickly followed by the murder of one of the detectorists. Black Dog Farm is soon revealed to be a very unsavoury place altogether - a place where a dodgy scientist has been carrying out illegal testing of drugs on anyone willing to participate. Are all the murders linked? And which of the possible suspects was responsible? 

Of course there's pleasure involved in trying to work out who did it (I certainly didn't succeed) but also, for readers of the earlier books, great delight in watching the development of characters who've been there since the beginning. Ruth and Nelson's daughter Kate (or Katie, as he insists on calling her, much to Ruth's annoyance) is nearly twelve, as bright and lively as always, and Nelson and his wife Michelle's son George is now three. Both families have more or less accepted this unusual situation, though neither of the two women involved is particularly happy about it. We meet Ruth's father for the first time - fairly recently widowed, he has fallen in love with a delightful Caribbean woman called Gloria, much to the disapproval of Ruth's conventional brother. And then there's Ruth and Nelson - not a great deal of action here throughout most of the novel, though it's clear that Ruth is thinking a great deal about the man who she recognises is the love of her life. But fear not - there are some dramatic developments later in the novel and interesting revelations right at the end.

If you're a fan of this series, you've probably read this one already. If not, it's never too late to embark on the continuing adventures of a delightful group of people, with an unmissable combination of suspense, humour and romance. 

 

 

A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell

I've read some great books already this year, but this one will undoubtedly end up on my Best of 2021. How I've managed not to read it before is a bit of a mystery, but it came to my attention just recently because it was featured in Lucy Worsley's documentary Blitz Spirit (which you can see on BBC iPlayer here - well worth watching). I've always known about the Blitz, as my newly married parents had to leave their London flat when it was bombed. But though I knew of it in a general sort of way, Chelsea Concerto brought it home to me in vivid detail that I'll never forget.

Faviell doesn't include year dates in her account, but I learned the background from Lucy Worsley. The Blitz began at 8 pm on 7 September 1940, when Hitler, annoyed that the British were bombing German cities, sent a convoy of 950 planes carrying incendiary and parachute bombs which were aimed at the warehouses in London's East End. 8 hours later, the German planes finally turned home, having destroyed most of their targets and killed 430 people. From that point on it was relentless for the rest of the year - on 29 December, the heaviest night of all, 100,000 incendiaries fell on the city. The Blitz continued on into 1941, until Hitler moved his planes elsewhere. By this time, 44000 people had lost their lives, and many many more had been rendered homeless.

Frances Faviell was an artist. She lived in Chelsea, an area of London which also suffered badly from the bombing because of its proximity to Battersea Power Station, a prime target on the opposite side of the river: 'The little borough was the third most heavily bombed in London. Of her wartime population no less than 2,099 were bomb casulalties, 534 of these being fatal. This meant that roughly one in every fourteen persons were either killed or injured'.

Faviell had signed up as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) worker at the beginning of the war. She had a small amount of nursing experience, so she ended up being assigned to a First Aid Post. Her training consisted of some attachments to London hospitals, where she encountered people from a lower social class for the first time. In the early months of the war, after an initial panic, everything seemed to settle down, and life went on more or less as normal: Faviell continued with her painting, and with dinner and lunch parties and 'a great many weddings', such as that of my parents. Refugees started to flood into London, and she was assigned a group to help house and clothe them - many had left home without even the barest of necessities. They would become her charges for the rest of the war. The news from Europe was bad, and as 1940 progressed, it was possible to watch dogfights between British and German planes in the sky above London: 'It seemed impossible at first to believe these were actual deadly battles and not mock ones as we had watched at aeriel displays at Hendon. It gave one a strange, sick feeling of excitement....It was horrible - but it had a macabre fascination impossible to resist'. Then, on 7 September, the bombing started. By the following morning, the whole East End was ablaze.

Now, after a few days of stunned shock and anger, Faviell and her fellow VADs were precipitated into the middle of the devastation. The bombing on Chelsea began, and many people lost their homes. Among them was a Doctor friend of Faviell's, whose twelve-year-old daughter, the only survivor of the family, was dug out of the ruins after four days, an event which made a tremendous impression on the workers.The relentless bombardment continued, but, as Faviell says:

The Blitz was providing something else besides bombs. it was making people talk to one another. People in shops, in the buses, in the streets often talked to me now. They opened up amazingly about how they thought and what they thought - how they felt and what they felt. They all liked to see the nurses' uniforms - and were loud in praise of the nurse, the firemen and the wardens. But they didn't like the indignity of sleeping in a bunk in a shelter with hundreds of others. The Blitz was doing something else - it was continuing the difficult process already begun before the war of breaking down class barriers.

Everyone was now exhausted and working flat out, including Faviell herself. As a nurse, and trained in anatomy at art school, she was assigned one of the grimmest of tasks - that of assembling the dismembered bodies for burial. '"Proper jigsaw puzzle, ain't it Miss"' as one of the mortuary attendants said to her. She also worked in a hospital that was taking in refugees from the East End, who upset the other patients because of how dirty they were. 'Some of these offenders were ordered to take a bath by the Medical Officer, but these were people who had never seen a bath, let alone taken one'. The experience, for both nurses and patient, was indescribable - one elderly woman was so encrusted with a lifetime of dirt that her body 'literally resembled the bark of a tree'.

But her most dramatic and dangerous experience - dramatised on Lucy Worsley's documentary - was the day when she was asked to help with a man who was trapped under a fallen building. He was in terrible pain, but the workers outside couldn't reach him, as he was stuck at the end of a tunnel. They literally seized on Faviell because of her slim light build, and persuaded her to attempt to reach him with a pad of chloroform. Owing to the narrowness of the shaft that led to the tunnel, she had to strip off down to her underclothes and be lowered in head first: '"Hold the torch in your teeth and grip tight"'. This event - told over several pages - traumatised her so much that she had to be put to bed by her loyal housekeeper Mrs Freeth.

There's more, so much more. The account is a stunningly vivid one, but it gains hugely from Faviell's perspective. It's good to know that in the middle of all this she managed to get married, and gave birth to her son in 1941. She writes extremely well, and looks at the sights and events with the eye of an artist. Certainly if you only ever read one book about London in WW2, this has to be the one.