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Kazuo Ishiguro鈥檚 Klara and the Sun might strike us as a straightforward piece of dystopian, near-future, technology-driven science fiction. And if we read enough recent news about ChatGPT and Replika, binge a few seasons of Black Mirror, and then squint a little, the world of the novel may even look like something with a non-zero chance of being our world within a generation. Certainly that鈥檚 one way to read the novel. But what struck me, rather, is the way in which Klara is a meditation on love, the irreplaceability of those we love, and so the existential fates that loving someone ties us to.

Because in thinking about the novel, I found I kept returning to the fact that Ishiguro dedicated it to the memory of his mother, Shizuko Ishiguro, his beloved and irreplaceable mother who died in 2019, and who he might very well feel he would do anything to still have with him. This is just the desperate state in which we find Chrissie Arthur concerning her daughter, Josie, albeit anticipatorily and also heightened by Chrissie鈥檚 having already lost her elder daughter, Sal, in much the same way as she now seems to be losing Josie.

For Josie is ill and may die from the genetic 鈥渓ifting鈥� procedure that Chrissie chose for her to undergo in the hopes of thereby securing 鈥渁 good life鈥� for Josie (210). But the procedure has gone wrong again, just as it did before with Sal. And now, in a dread-suffused attempt to somehow evade the fate that love seems only to have repeatedly prepared for her, Chrissie is grasping at straws that, deep down, she seems to know can鈥檛 bear the full weight of her love for the one and only Josie.

In particular, Chrissie has let herself be nearly persuaded by Henry Capaldi that the Artificial Friend (AF) Klara can 鈥渓earn Josie in her entirety鈥� (211), such that, if Josie dies, an AF version of Josie 鈥渋nhabited鈥� by Klara would be able to 鈥渃ontinue Josie鈥� (207), in just the same sense as present-day Josie 鈥渃ontinues鈥� the younger Josie who used to visit Morgan鈥檚 Falls. That is, Capaldi insists and Chrissie wants desperately to believe that AF Josie+Klara 鈥渞eally will be Josie鈥� (205), and that Chrissie will therefore 鈥渉ave every right to love her just as [she] love[s] Josie now鈥� (208).

But Chrissie also recognizes 鈥渢he inconsistency鈥濃�攁s her ex-husband Paul calls it (198)鈥攊n thinking that Josie can be both dead and also still really there with her to love. And in Chrissie鈥檚 insistence that she鈥檚 鈥渏ust trying to find a way forward for us鈥� (199), a way forward that includes Josie, we can feel her readiness to do anything to square the circle of irreparable loss, as any of us might. For there simply are no replacements for those we love, and so we are vulnerable in loving them. But our willingness to love despite that vulnerability is what makes our love so precious, and itself so irreplaceable.