Machines Like Me

Machines Like Me is deeply intriguing, a little unnerving and quite captivating.

In it, McEwan grapples with possibility and probability: When it's possible to create machines that think and feel, what's the probability that we get it right? And could we ever really understand what we've made?

Stock market gambler Charlie, 32, spends his inheritance on an artificial human, aptly named Adam, which he coprogrammes with his upstairs neighbour Miranda, 22 who of course, he's in love with. This domestic triangle is set within our world, except it's the Eighties, Thatcher is in power (although she's lost the Falklands war) and technology is racing ahead, largely thanks to Alan Turing, who is still alive and well, living in Camden.

Aside from McEwan's pagelong musings on AI and mathematical conundrums which are interesting, but do temper the plot there's much (amusing) awkwardness. Adam is constantly reciting haikus he's formulated, he's decided he's in love with Miranda, and Charlie has a habit of putting his foot in it, either with eminent scientists or abusive parents in parks.

The ordinariness of the trio, despite Miranda's dark, secretive past, and how they just sort of jog along together in a little bubble, the three of them in their kitchen, alternating between red wine and sips of warm water (for Adam), is strangely endearing. And McEwan's prose is, as to expected, nuanced, thoughtful and beguiling. Not a loseyourselfinit page turner, Machines Like Me will instead leave you questioning, and imagining how your own not too distant future might look.