Machines Like Me
By Ian McEwan
Published 2019
Read July 2024
This reader has only read one Ian McEwan novel previously: Atonement. This reader was underwhelmed by that book and irritated at the author for a device he used. Thus, this reader picked up Machine Like Me with some hesitation but it’s on this reader’s book club’s schedule, and this reader does enjoy speculative fiction and some sci-fi so this reader was ready to be wowed by this apparently highly literary author.
The author sets the book in London in an alternate 1982. Some reviewers have speculate this year was chosen so that Alan Turing could be an important character if he hadn’t been punished for his sexuality. Alternate aspects of this 1982: self-driving cars are common, Margaret Thatcher is practically in hiding for losing the war over the Falkland Islands, and other changes. It seemed to this reader the author may have enjoyed this aspect of the novel more than his characters.
Charlie Friend is the narrator of the story. He is unemployed and makes enough money to pay the rent by day-trading stocks. He invests all his inheritance from his mother, some 86,000 pounds, on one of 12 Adams that Turing and his company have released into the market. (All 13 Eves were purchased ahead of Charlie’s purchase.) He has a crush on his upstairs neighbor, Miranda, who is ten years younger than Charlie and a doctoral student of social history. She has different views on what sex does or doesn’t mean compared with Charlie and she carelessly falls into a relationship with Charlie seemingly because there isn’t much reason not to do so.
Charlie has big dreams of using his Adam to build a life with Miranda. He foists 50% of the responsibility for creating Adam’s personality of Miranda without anticipating how this could possibly go wrong. But lack of thinking about decisions is par for the course for Charlie—an example being spending the entire inheritance on Adam when he barely makes his rent.
Whether planned or not, Adam is the most interesting character in the book. He has access to the entire internet in his head. He uses it to learn how to write haikus, to warn Charlie about Miranda’s past, etc.
McEwan tries to focus us on some big philosophical questions which are interesting—what makes a human “human”, can a robot love like a human (yes he can have sex but what about the emotional aspects of love) for starters. Unfortunately for this reader, the plot involving Miranda’s past and the plot involving her desire to rescue a young boy from his terrible parents don’t enable these questions to be explored as much as the author may think they do.
This reader enjoys speculative fiction and sci-fi, especially when they deal with broader philosophical questions. The authors of the best of these books don’t try to run away from the genre and say they what they write is literary fiction, not that sci-fi stuff. That attitude dismisses some great books unnecessarily and unfortunately. This author has experience an outcome of this trashing—needing to justify why serious book discussions can be had for speculative fiction and science fiction. This reader replies: Rubbish!
Reasons that this reader participates in three book discussion groups include being exposed to books that wouldn’t come onto her reading list otherwise altering this reader’s perception of books. This reader looks forward to discussion of this book; will her views of this book be altered and how?
MarshaReads.com 