This is the first Ishiguro I've finished, and I was a little dubious going in because it was recced by a litfic friend, and sometimes literary fiction writers/readers doing SF comes out very clunky like this is the first time it's occurred to anyone that robots might have feelings, while all the SF fans sigh and mutter about having talked about this in the 1960s.

But I loved this! I loved how thoughtfully Ishiguro put the world together, and rolled the information out to the reader. The entire book is written from the point of view of an android who had incomplete knowledge of the world, and to some extent figures stuff out as she goes, but never does get the full picture. There's so much restraint in the writing to let that happen instead of info-dumping. We as readers can figure out a bit more sometimes through a combination of genre awareness and being humans, but the full picture of the world is never clear, and it worked so well.

Keeping the world in shadow also underlined the surreality of a character who does not and cannot understand that she's disposable slave labour, replaceable in a world that's rapidly tumbling towards making everyone replaceable. It is, on some level, also a horror novel, more so as none of the characters involved understanding that. The characters involved don't understand a lot about each other, either, which is a mode in which Ishiguro is known for. The miscommunication never feels pointless or contrived, and the meanness and occasional cruelty comes across as intensely human, even if Klara gives too many people far too much benefit of the doubt.

It's beautiful, and sad, and makes me very angry, all at once.