Novelist (and Nobel Laureate) Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel Klara And The Sun kidnapped me Saturday; I read it through the day and most of overnight until I finished it.

That is pretty rare for me.

I’m not into hype or hyperbole, but Ishiguro has written another wonderful book. He’s up there with Marquez and Bellows now in my mind.

Piercing and touching is the word that keeps coming to mind.

He’s a wonderful writer  – an original and remarkable genius -, and he writes about the heart in a way that is never cloying or trite but that has enormous power.

He imagines a future that is too close and too believable for comfort, and he leaves us wishing we had the heart of a manufactured machine.

The novel is narrated by Klara, an Artificial Friend with great intuitive and empathic skills.

For a long while, she sat in the window of a department store in the future, where people are defined by wealth and privilege,  where children no longer go out much or spend time with friends, and the country is breaking up into fascistic communities.

It’s a sad, almost dystopian, and cruel world. Klara is spotted by Josie, a young human who is sick and dying. She and her mother agree to buy Klara and take her home.

She is to keep the lonely and declining Josie from being lonely or neglected.

This is a book about love, but also technology.

First off, Ishiguro has Artificial Intelligence in mind when he undertook this novel. Work on real Klaras is very much underway and is inevitable now, no longer something out of science fiction.

Ishiguro, intentionally or not, is reminding us with this story that we are not ready for AI companions, even if they are getting ready for us. The problem isn’t that they are tougher or smarter than us; the problem is that they are better than us.

His novel is about what love means.

I think it is also about whether it is possible (and what would happen) if we started making nicer and more human machines than the people they are supposed to serve.

Much of the sci-fi world raises the spectre of machines that become so smart they will threaten us and overcome us.

But the other possibility – becoming more real by the day – is that they will be kinder and more loving than we are for the simple reason that they can be programmed to be anything we wish them to be or us to be.

Klara is a beautifully rendered character in this book.

I had this strange realization that the Artificial Friend Klara was the only character in the book that I really like and the only one who seemed to grasp what it means to love and care for another being.

Klara is a humanoid who cares more about humans than humans do.

Klara And The Sun Is a wonderful story, filled with masterful touches and flawless writing.

I can’t honestly say it’s a happy story or a hopeful one, but it comes across as so very real.

At one point early on in the story, a woman who is meeting Klara for the first time: “One never knows how to greet a guest like you,” she said, “After all, are you a guest at all? Or do I treat you like a vacuum cleaner?”

It’s possible to worry Klara, even wound her.

But she never gets angry or loses control. And she is never cruel or dishonest.

How could she, if she is no different than a vacuum cleaner?

She becomes what Josie needs her to be. She is shocked and puzzled by the way children and adults in Josie’s world behave. She serves humans but can not comprehend them at times. Welcome to the club.

Since she is incapable of treachery herself, she can’t spot it or comprehend it in people. How can we create such caring machines but find it so difficult to be caring?

The jarring thing is that she has richer and deeper feelings and sensitivity than anyone around her.

Klara is not a robot nor a servant.

These AI’s are friends but not equals.

Klara’s stated purpose is to help Josie get through the lonely and painful years until college.

But of course, she ends up being so much more than that, as one would expect from an Ishiguro story.

The story is more complex than it seems at first. Bit by bit, Klara uncovers the real reasons she was purchased and brought into Josie’s life.

The novel takes place in the disturbingly near future; most workers have already been “substituted,” their labor now performed by A.I. creations. “High rank” children are lifted into lives of higher education and prosperity; poor children are left behind. They are “unlifted.”

Many people in this not-so-brave new world find themselves obsolete, cast aside so that others can move forward.

Klara is devoted to Josie, so devoted she is willing to sacrifice herself to save her.

She is pure and faithful, in some ways much like a service dog for the blind.  Klara’s fate and the fate of all “Artificial Friends” are to be a good friend to a child and then fade away as their batteries die. Inevitably, they will be left behind themselves.

But Klara is different from the other machines. Her story is her own.

You wonder throughout the novel if Klara can become or is already a sentient being. I would say she almost is….but that isn’t where the story is going. It’s not where Ishiguro wants to go.

Part of Ishoguru’s mastery is that Klara makes us appreciate and even love her, but her language is just stiff enough to remind us that she is not real. It’s a difficult line to cross, but Ishiguro never stumbles.

Klara does know how to love, but only selfishly. She never loves for herself.

Since Klara is powered by solar power, she mistakenly believes the sun is God and sets out to beseech her Lord to save her friend.

Her search for help is heartbreaking. The result is surprising.

I don’t want to go into the plot any further other than to say the book is something of a masterpiece, wonderfully written and full of portent, foreboding, and reflection.

I finished this book a couple of days ago, and I’m still thinking about it.

I’m thinking about love, mortality, and most of all, about what it means to be human. Humans are so flawed and broken that it is easy enough to think of an AI machine that is kinder and more loving than we are.

I’m not sure where Ishiguro intended to end up with this eerily timely story, but if there is a message here, I think it is this: Karla learned what many of us might also be pondering: it might already be too late.

Klara deserved to live in our world. Do we?