Synopses & Reviews
From Ian McEwan, Booker Prize winner and international bestselling author of Atonement and The Children Act
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.
Review
"Morally complex and very disturbing, animated by a spirit of sinister and intelligent mischief that feels unique to its author."
The Guardian
Review
"Witty and humane . . . a retrofuturist family drama that doubles as a cautionary fable about artificial intelligence, consent, and justice." The New Yorker
Review
"A searching, sharply intelligent, and often deeply discomfiting pass through the Black Mirror looking glass — and all the promise and peril of machine dreams." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"[A] sharp, unsettling read . . . about love, family, jealousy and deceit. Ultimately, it asks a surprisingly mournful question: If we built a machine that could look into our hearts, could we really expect it to like what it sees?" The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
IAN McEWAN is the bestselling author of seventeen books, including the novels Nutshell; The Children Act; Sweet Tooth; Solar, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; On Chesil Beach; Saturday; Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the W. H. Smith Literary Award; The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs, both short-listed for the Booker Prize; Amsterdam, winner of the Booker Prize; and The Child in Time, winner of the Whitbread Award; as well as the story collections First Love, Last Rites, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and In Between the Sheets.