Your mileage may vary with this one if you've never read one of Ishiguro's hopeful dystopian contemporary tales about what it means to be human, and I was very much holding my breath for this one to recapture the same depth and sudden overwhelm of emotions that Never Let Me Go has in its crescendo & denouement. I don't know if I wish I could say it hit the same way because reading Ishiguro's most well known work (that was adapted into a mediocre film with baby-Andrew Garfield & Keira Knightley) and only fully understanding the premise's poignance in its close is an experience that is uniquely rewarding to sit with through its pain.
Klara and the Sun does some beautiful things with its simple take on a more relevant topic to our current technological landscape. It never goes the direction you think it will or should, and it determinedly stays within the box that its narrative framing requires of it (this constraint is largely due to another of Ishiguro's "incomplete" protagonists who unreliably shares a story with limited information about the world around them).
If I'm not setting up the story to be recommended well, I think that's probably endemic to the meanderingly tranquil plot-points of Klara's story. The Goodreads description of the book itself is woefully underwhelming and doesn't draw you in, as most who read this novel are likely already aware of Ishiguro's power to do a lot with a little (though I'll admit the cover art is gorgeous and modern, probably doing it some much needed favors).
One of the questions the book asks its reader, one that we're all asking right now as more and more artificial creations cross the uncanny valley every week, is answered in an actually beautiful way. That's why this novel feels more "hopeful dystopian" and less "we're-irredeemably-going-the-wrong-way dystopian." Klara, the unlikely hero in the novel's society and in our own read of her potential, states the core conceit of the book for our new era. We may be headed into times with unnatural technologies and warped views of social cohesion, but we head there with an anchor, a tether. And that tether is each other.
I guess we wait to see how this take ages...
*As is often the case, writing about this book clarified so many of my thoughts around it, so I shifted my rating to a 4 from 3.5 out of 5. I may not have loved the table setting as much as I often do with his novels, but Ishiguro always knows how to deliver on the meal!