Machines Like Me
A Novel
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4.1 • 226 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—”a sharply intelligent novel of ideas” (The New York Times) that asks whether a machine can understand the human heart, or whether we are the ones who lack understanding.
Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London—where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence—Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he codesigns Adam's personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart—and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan's subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human—our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Ever wondered what it truly means to be human? Ian McEwan has. His previous books delve into all the experiences—love, regret, memory, jealousy, fear, redemption—that make us so. This time around, McEwan puts an unsettling, retro-futuristic spin on this fundamental question. Strange, thought-provoking, and often funny, Machines Like Me is set in a version the of ’80s where lifelike robots are readily available for purchase. A young day trader looking for a housekeeper and companion ends up entangled in a love triangle with his shady girlfriend and new robot, Adam. While both humans behave quite badly, the rational and lovelorn bot turns out to be the book’s most humane character.
Customer Reviews
Machines like Me
Once again a story filled with moral insights with every page asking questions of us as to who we are and why we believe as we do. Magically thought provoking but then all of Ian McEwan’s books are. I carry his stories with me and marvel at his imagination and writing skills.
Average
Not a terribly engaging read. I kept waiting for something that never arrived in this book. It did not impress and came across, in the end, as being preachy.
Machines like me
Weird stuff but interesting
Not sure why political history was changed
You have to like Adam, but he lacked compassion