The titular narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun is an Artificial Friend, a robot specifically manufactured to provide companionship to lonely children. The world on display is largely our own, though the presence of functional human-like robots should be the first indication that we're firmly in sci-fi territory. The first 40 pages or so concern Klara's time at the store she is eventually purchased from, where her specific gifts become clear. Klara is particularly adept at observing details and putting them together, which leads to some combination of insightfulness and surrealism in her interactions with the larger world around her. She comes to believe, for example, that the Sun (as in the incandescent orb in the sky) is alive, has his own will (and yes, the Sun in Klara's mind is gendered), and is capable of performing acts of miraculous healing. She also believes that the Cootings Machine, a piece of construction equipment which never has its purpose spelled out but which emits so much Pollution that it can blot out the Sun in its immediate surroundings, is obviously the Sun's great foe (and therefore the villain of Klara's story).
Klara's narration has a strange, somewhat disjointed quality to it; there's an almost child-like diction, with a marked tendency toward referring to others in the third person, even when they're the only person she's speaking to. Her observations can be somewhat unsettling at times, and she has far from a full understanding of emotions, leading her to say and do things that are perhaps not the best choice at the time.
Most of the book is focused on Klara's interactions with Josie, a sickly adolescent girl who chooses her from the store. From the start, there's something a little off about the whole situation; Josie's mother directly asks Klara to show her imitation abilities off in the store, after a few encounters across the shop window, and the relationship between the Mother and Klara is anything but normal, as the story progresses; the reason for this becomes clear, but the implications are decidedly chilling.
The world on display is a sort of light dystopia, plausible but thankfully not something currently feasible. Robots have largely replaced even some highly-trained and creative-thinking workers (referred to as "substitution"), and colleges are actively refusing entry to new students who haven't been "lifted", a process of gene-therapy that yields higher intellect (though in Josie's case, also led to significant health issues). The stresses that this puts on the system are obvious, and appear generally to be exactly what one might expect increased unemployment on that sort of scale to become.
Klara's place in all of this is initially confusing to her, but as she begins to realize what the purpose of bringing her into the household actually is, she finds herself divided in how best to act. She believes the clear solution is to requrst assistance from the Sun and his miraculous healing, going so far as to accept a quest from him to kill the Cootings Machine at any cost.
It's a delightful read, and the way that the shape of the dystopia creeps in slowly, only as Klara herself becomes aware of each aspect, is amazing. The way that Klara sees the world is inherently different than the way humans do (details broken out into boxes, shapes abstracted into primitives when she isn't focusing on them specifically) and this comes out perfectly, though it is a touch jarring at first.
I find myself wondering how similar Ishiguro's other works might be. I know for sure that he has written other, more overt dystopian literature that deals with rather darker themes, though I have little interest in reading it at this time (so soon after Nineteen Eighty-Four). Even so, though, he's definitely going on my list of authors I need to read more of.
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