Machines Like Me

I read this in two days. It is a captivating novel, with brilliant characterisation, including of Adam - an android who develops a mind of his own whilst living with with his purchaser Charlie, and his girlfriend Miranda. Adam is a fast learner. combing the internet in his head all night in search of new information, understanding and poetry. The big problem; he lacks understanding of the nuances of human morality ...All of this is set in alternative UK of the 1980s in which Britain loses the Falklands war and where mobile phones, the internet, Sat Nav are all already common place. Almost a fifth of cars are autonomous vehicles - and AI entities, androids like Adam, are are just beginning to appear.So much for the story, and i can write no more without spoilers, but makes for compulsive reading- but it is the depth of the writing which is astonishing and which makes this such a fascinating novel. There are parallels with the real world of today - splits in the Labour Party, a disintegrating Conservative party, protests in the streets, debate about Britain's place in Europe and in the world - but it is the moral questions this book poses which have left me thinking even after I have finished the book - the nature of sentience, the role of truth and of loyalty, the random twists and turns of fate on our lives and life in general - there is so much in these 300 odd pages.I strongly recommend you read this excellent book for yourself

I confess I've always struggled with McEwan, finding his style turgid and pedantic. Writing in the first-person is always a dangerous technique, and McEwan just isn't a good enough writer to pull it off. There was so much irrelevant padding in this book that it was very hard to get to the end. The basic premise was a good one: Robots are the future and their science is compelling. I have them in one of my own novels, but to wrap this up in the silly anachronistic context of re-written 1980's history was ludicrous and implausible. McEwan suggests that if Alan Turing had lived on, ALL technology would have arrived forty years before it did, completely ignoring not only the contribution of thousands of other researchers along the way but also showing a lot of ignorance about the evolution of new materials that made the science of computers and cell phones a possibility - these things simply didn't and couldn't exist in the 1980's. As for Thatcher losing the Faulklands War and Tony Benn being killed in the Brighton bomb well, what was the point of that to this novel? The 'history' in the book is ridiculous, and the science deeply flawed and invasive. Take for example, the moment when Adam threatens to rip off our (boring) hero's arm 'at the ball and socket joint' - sorry, but arms aren't attached by a ball and socket joint. It almost got interesting when it was suggested that Charlie was actually the robot rather than Adam. Now, that WOULD have been an ingenious twist to the story, but McEwan missed his own cue, and we moved on. The moribund plot ground onwards slowly, slightly speeding up towards the end when Adam was dispatched, but then slowed to a halt with a miserable so-what finish. Sorry, but two-star award is over-genreous.

Reads like a dream as all McEwan invariably does. Basically this is about a love triangle with an android and the moral dilemmas surrounding such a relationship. However, the contrivance is that history s out of joint, and the scientific progress necessary for a functioning android that will appear, act and behave like a human, and in reality, is still just out of reach has been achieved by the mid 1980's. Although this is rather fun - the Falkland's war has been lost, the Beatles are still performing and Tony Benn succeeds Thatcher as Prime Minister. This fills page after page of detailed analysis of cause and effect, whereas, for me, more time spent on the inter-relationships of the central trio would have developed a more powerful novel.

Ian McEwan has written some fabulous novels. In particular, I thoroughly enjoyed the last two. So, this one was complete let-down.About half-way through, I was puzzled and bored. So I checked out the Amazon reviews and found that a lot of people had had similar reactions.Too bad. A great idea but ...The characters were flat and uninteresting. Perhaps Adam's personality was intellectually interesting but it was difficult to engaged in his moral and ethical dilemmas. The plot line was artificial and had many improbabilities.At one point, I thought Charlie was the real robot. now, that would have been thought-provoking.The alternative history backdrop, while interesting in itself, didn't really help the central theme.Very disaapointing. I always wait for the latest Ian McEwan with anticipation and excitement.

20 pages in and already spellbound. Such a wonderful writer!