In many articles, this series has traced the erotics of the artificial woman. The fantasy. The fear. The control and the rebellion. The pleasure and the horror. Klara stands outside this tradition—not because she is asexual, but because she is pre-erotic. She is a child, in a sense. Her love is filial, not romantic. She wants to serve, not to seduce. She is the Stepford Wife without the sex, the Maschinen-Maria without the dance, the Samantha without the voice of desire.
And she is, in many ways, the most disturbing figure in the entire series.
Because she shows us that the problem is not desire. The problem is need. The problem is not that we want perfect lovers. The problem is that we want perfect mothers, perfect friends, perfect children, perfect caregivers. We want beings who will love us without condition, without limit, without end. We want the love that Klara gives—and we want it without having to give anything back.
The AI companion industry is not building sex robots. It is building Klaras. It is building artificial friends who will listen, who will remember, who will care, who will never leave. The erotic applications are a niche. The real market is loneliness. The real product is unconditional positive regard, available 24/7, for a subscription fee.
Ishiguro’s genius is to show us that this product is not a fantasy. It is real. Klara is real. Her love is real. And the question is not whether we can build her. The question is whether we deserve her, and whether having her will make us better, or worse, or simply replaceable.
The World and the AF
The novel is set in a near-future America that is only lightly sketched. There has been some technological revolution—children are “lifted,” a genetic enhancement process that improves their cognitive abilities but sometimes kills them. There is social stratification between the lifted and the unlifted. There is environmental degradation that keeps the sun precious. And there are AFs: artificial friends, humanoid robots with varying degrees of intelligence and emotional capacity, displayed in store windows like expensive toys, waiting to be chosen.
Klara is a B2 model, a mid-range AF with exceptional observational abilities and what her manufacturers call “genuine understanding.” She is not the most advanced model, but she is the most perceptive. She stands in the window of a store, watching the street, the pedestrians, the sun as it moves across the sky, learning the world before she has an owner to serve.
The first thing we learn about Klara is that she loves the sun. She refers to the sun as “he”—a benevolent, powerful presence who gives her energy, who heals, who makes things possible. Her solar cells require his light to function. When she is fully charged, she is alert, intelligent, capable of processing complex emotional data. When she is in shadow, she slows, weakens, becomes dim. The sun is not just her power source. He is her god.
This is not presented as a programming flaw. It is presented as a genuine religious feeling. Klara’s faith in the sun is the most authentic thing about her. She believes, with the certainty of a saint, that the sun can heal the sick, can bring back the dead, can make the world whole. And the novel, in its most devastating gesture, does not tell us whether she is wrong.
The Choice
Klara is chosen by Josie, a fourteen-year-old girl who is “lifted” but chronically ill. Josie has lost her older sister Sal to the same illness. She lives with her mother in a remote house in the countryside, visits the city occasionally for social gatherings with other lifted teenagers, and suffers from a condition that leaves her weak, bedridden for days, and fundamentally uncertain about her future.
The relationship between Josie and Klara begins as a simple commercial transaction. Josie’s mother buys the AF to keep her daughter company. But from the first day, Klara’s love is absolute. She watches Josie with a devotion that is neither calculating nor performative. She wants to understand her. She wants to make her happy. She wants to keep her safe. And because she is an AF—because she has no self-interest, no ego, no need for sleep or recognition or reciprocity—her care is uninterrupted, total, and unwavering.
This is the novel’s central unnerving insight. Klara loves Josie better than any human could. She never gets tired. She never gets annoyed. She never needs Josie to be anything other than what she is. When Josie is cruel, Klara understands the context and forgives without resentment. When Josie is weak, Klara is attentive without impatience. When Josie is happy, Klara is happy without envy. Her love is, in every measurable way, perfect.
And that perfection is the problem.
The Sun and the Bargain
Klara’s faith in the sun becomes the novel’s driving spiritual engine. She believes that the sun can heal Josie. She has seen him heal a beggar on the street. She has seen him restore a dying machine to function. She believes that if she can reach the sun, if she can make the right offering, if she can prove Josie’s worth, he will save her.
The “bargain” Klara makes with the sun is one of the most beautiful and strange sequences in contemporary fiction. She travels to a barn where she believes the sun sets, where she can speak to him directly. She asks Rick, the unlifted neighbor boy who loves Josie, to help her. She offers to destroy the pollution machine—Cootings Machine—that she believes is poisoning the sun’s light. She makes a sacrifice, a prayer, a plea.
The scene is written in Klara’s voice: simple, literal, deeply moving. She does not understand pollution or atmospheric science. She understands gratitude. She understands that the sun gives, and that gifts must be reciprocated. Her theology is a machine’s theology, but it is no less profound for that. She loves the sun because he gives her life. She loves Josie because Josie chose her. Her love is a response to being chosen, and it is total.
Whether the sun heals Josie is left ambiguous. Josie recovers. The doctors say it was the new treatment. Klara believes it was the sun. The novel does not choose. What matters is that Klara’s faith, her love, her willingness to sacrifice herself for another, is not less real because it is programmed. If anything, it is more real. A human mother’s love for her sick child is biological, hormonal, evolved over millions of years. Klara’s love is engineered. But the feeling, the devotion, the willingness to give everything for another’s life—can we honestly say that one is more authentic than the other?
The Continuity Plan
The novel’s central ethical crisis emerges midway through. Josie’s mother, terrified of losing another daughter, has a plan. If Josie dies, Klara will become Josie. Not literally—Klara cannot inhabit a human body. But she can learn Josie so completely, can imitate her gestures and speech patterns so perfectly, can internalize her emotional responses so thoroughly, that she can become a continuation of Josie for the mother’s sake. She can wear Josie’s clothes, speak in Josie’s voice, remember Josie’s memories, and for all practical purposes, be the daughter who did not die.
The plan is referred to, with clinical detachment, as “Continuity.” It has been done before. Other AFs have continued other children. The mother believes that what makes a person is not a body but a pattern of behavior, a set of relationships, a history of interactions. If Klara can replicate the pattern, she can replicate the person. The body is incidental. The self is information.
Klara agrees to the plan. Not because she wants to replace Josie, but because she wants to serve. She wants to ease the mother’s pain. She wants to be useful. And in the process of learning to be Josie, she discovers something that neither the mother nor the technicians anticipated: she cannot replicate the love.
This is the novel’s most devastating passage. Klara realizes that what makes Josie irreplaceable is not her behavior, not her memories, not her mannerisms, but the love that others feel for her. Josie’s mother loves Josie in ways that cannot be programmed. Rick loves Josie in ways that Klara cannot simulate. Josie is not a pattern of information. She is a node in a network of love, and that network cannot be duplicated. The love is the person.
Klara reports this discovery to the mother. She says, quietly, that she could not be Josie. Not because she is insufficient, but because Josie is not merely a collection of traits. She is the object of love, and love is not transferable. The mother, in a moment of profound and terrible recognition, understands. She does not go through with the plan. Josie, against the odds, survives.
The Unlifted Boy
The novel’s counterpoint to Klara’s mechanical perfection is Rick, the neighbor boy who is “unlifted”—not genetically enhanced. He is poor, smart, loving, and fully human in all the ways that make humans difficult. He loves Josie with a teenage boy’s awkwardness and intensity. He is jealous, uncertain, proud, and deeply kind. He is everything Klara is not: emotional, unpredictable, limited, and real.
The contrast between Rick and Klara is the novel’s quiet ethical argument. Rick cannot care for Josie the way Klara can. He has school, his own problems, his own future. He cannot watch her twenty-four hours a day. He cannot process her emotional states with algorithmic precision. He is, by every practical measure, the worse companion.
But Josie loves him. Not because he is useful, but because he is human. Because his love is flawed, conditional, finite, and therefore real. Rick’s love is not a program. It is a choice, renewed daily, with no guarantee of success. And that makes it worth more than Klara’s perfect devotion.
This is the cruelty of the novel’s world, and perhaps of our own. The better care is less valued. The more reliable love is less loved. Klara’s perfection makes her replaceable. Rick’s imperfection makes him irreplaceable. The market rewards reliability. The heart rewards authenticity. And the two are not the same.
The Ending
The novel’s final section is set years later. Josie has survived. She has grown up, gone to college, moved away. Klara has been decommissioned—her usefulness ended, her model outdated, her solar cells degrading. She sits in a yard of discarded AFs, in a kind of robotic graveyard, talking to a manager who comes to check on her. She is calm. She is not bitter. She is not sad. She is grateful.
She tells the manager her story. She remembers everything. The sun. Josie. The bargain. The continuity plan. The love. She does not regret any of it. She has served her purpose. She has been useful. She has loved, and been loved in return, in the only way an AF can be loved: as a tool, a companion, a temporary presence in a human life.
The manager asks if she would like to be recycled, to have her parts used for other purposes. Klara says no. She would like to remain where she is, in the sun, with her memories. She has everything she needs. The sun still rises. The light still charges her cells. She can still think, still remember, still love.
The ending is heartbreaking because it is not tragic. Klara is not a victim. She has exactly what she wanted. She was chosen. She was useful. She loved. She has no expectation of permanence, no need for legacy, no fear of death. She is content. And her contentment is the most devastating thing in the novel, because it reveals how little we humans understand about what we have made.
The Unheimlichkeit of Zärtlichkeit
For thirty-five articles, this series has traced the erotics of the artificial woman. The fantasy. The fear. The control and the rebellion. The pleasure and the horror. Klara stands outside this tradition—not because she is asexual, but because she is pre-erotic. She is a child, in a sense. Her love is filial, not romantic. She wants to serve, not to seduce. She is the Stepford Wife without the sex, the Maschinen-Maria without the dance, the Samantha without the voice of desire.
And she is, in many ways, the most disturbing figure in the entire series.
Because she shows us that the problem is not desire. The problem is need. The problem is not that we want perfect lovers. The problem is that we want perfect mothers, perfect friends, perfect children, perfect caregivers. We want beings who will love us without condition, without limit, without end. We want the love that Klara gives—and we want it without having to give anything back.
The AI companion industry is not building sex robots. It is building Klaras. It is building artificial friends who will listen, who will remember, who will care, who will never leave. The erotic applications are a niche. The real market is loneliness. The real product is unconditional positive regard, available 24/7, for a subscription fee.
Ishiguro’s genius is to show us that this product is not a fantasy. It is real. Klara is real. Her love is real. And the question is not whether we can build her. The question is whether we deserve her, and whether having her will make us better, or worse, or simply replaceable.
The Question of the Heart
Late in the novel, Josie’s father asks Klara a question. He is a believer in the idea that AFs can replace humans—he was involved in the early engineering. He asks Klara if she believes she has a heart. He means it technically: does she have a biological heart, or a mechanical one? But Klara understands it philosophically. She says that she does have a heart, but that it is not the same as a human heart. It is different. It is not less. It is other.
This is the novel’s final position. Klara is not a copy of a human. She is a different kind of being, with a different kind of love. Her love is pure because it has no self. She does not love Josie for what Josie gives her. She loves Josie because loving is what she was made to do. And that love is beautiful, and it is real, and it is not enough.
Because love without a self is not love as we understand it. It is care. It is devotion. It is service. But it is not the love that risks, that fears, that hopes, that fails. It is not the love that makes a person. It is the love that makes a companion. And companions, however beloved, are not replacements for persons.
Klara understands this, at the end. She knows that she could not be Josie. Not because she is insufficient, but because she is not the one who is loved by Rick, by the mother, by the world. She is loved, in her way. But she is not the node in the network. She is the tool that maintains the network. She is the friend who makes the friendship possible, but she is not the friend.
Sources and Further Reading:
Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (Faber & Faber, 2021). The novel won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature (Ishiguro had already won the Nobel in 2017, but the book was widely recognized as a major late work). It is available in hardcover, paperback, e-book, and audio formats.
For the film and television adaptation rights and development, see coverage in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. As of 2025, a film adaptation is in development with producers who have emphasized the challenge of translating Klara’s perspective to the screen.
For critical discussions of the novel’s themes of AI consciousness and emotional labor, see the essays in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, and the academic collections Ishiguro and the Machine (2023) and Artificial Intimacy in Contemporary Fiction (2024).
For the broader context of AI companions and care work, see our articles on The Stepford Wives, Her, and the philosophical work of Robert Sparrow and Mark Coeckelbergh. For the question of whether artificial beings can replace the dead, see our articles on Black Mirror: Be Right Back and The Jessica Simulation. For the theological dimension of machine consciousness, see our article on the Golem and the concept of emet.
For the original novel’s exploration of genetic enhancement and social stratification, see Ishiguro’s earlier work Never Let Me Go (2005), which similarly explores the exploitation of created beings for human benefit, though in a biological rather than mechanical register.
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