This time last year, in lockdown, my partner and I decided to work our way through the novels long-listed for the Booker prize. Surprisingly, we both agreed before the announcement of the winner that Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart was the best and, even more surprisingly, it won. A few weeks ago I considered the recently announced 2021 long-list: so many presumably good writers I’d never heard of!

I started off with the one writer I’d read before, Kazuo Ishiguro. His book, Klara and the Sun, ventures into science fiction. Klara is an android, an Artificial Friend. Well-to-do young people have AFs who are combination sibling, plaything, and nursemaid, and Klara is chosen by Josie, a fragile adolescent. With extraordinary powers of observation, Klara has learned ‘devotion’ perfectly. She is powered by the sun, which for her seems to take on a kind of religious significance and with an unbelievable naivety, given her observational skills, she believes that the sun lives in a neighbour’s barn. I found this all rather implausible. When Josie goes off to college she glibly says, ‘You’ve been just great, Klara.’  That’s it. This book is said to be about love. If so, it’s a very pessimistic prediction for the near future.