Machines Like Me - Ian McEwan

Machines Like Me

By Ian McEwan

  • Release Date: 2019-04-23
  • Genre: Literary Fiction
Score: 4
4
From 209 Ratings

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.

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons.

Reviews

  • Machines like me

    3
    By ot Take
    Weird stuff but interesting Not sure why political history was changed You have to like Adam, but he lacked compassion
  • Machines like Me

    5
    By Nick is my Dog
    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.