Machines Like Me: A Novel
by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan is one of Britain’s best known and most venerated novelists alive today, and his much-anticipated seventeenth book Machines Like Me takes the form a counterfactual novel, set in an alternative 1983, in which the (still living) mathematician Alan Turing has led major breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence. When 25 androids – 12 ‘male’ Adams, and 13 ‘female’ Eves – are released to the public, one owner finds himself in a complex love triangle with his girlfriend and android Adam.
McEwan has previously spoken to Five Books about the books that have shaped his novels.
Commentary
“Machines Like Me” is a sharply intelligent novel of ideas. McEwan’s writing about the creation of a robot’s personality allows him to speculate on the nature of personality, and thus humanity, in general … There are some pokey moments in this novel, some dead nodes. But McEwan has an interesting mind and he is nearly always good company on the page. In whichever direction he turns, he has worthwhile commentary to make.
There’s not been a bad Ian McEwan novel since the Booker-winning Amsterdam, but this is right up there with his very best. Machines Like Me manages to combine the dark acidity of McEwan’s great early stories with the crowd-pleasing readability of his more recent work. A novel this smart oughtn’t to be such fun, but it is.
The book, according to the author