Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

First published in Great Britain in 2019; published by Doubleday/Nan A. Talese on April 23, 2019

In Machines Like Me, Ian McEwan returns to the topic of false accusations, the underpinning of Atonement, but in a much different context. The novel is light but its subject matter is not. McEwan explores the failings (and perhaps the strengths) of humanity by comparing humans, including the false accuser, to the ideal of artificial humans who believe that proper behavior is clear and easily defined. The artificial humans are self-aware and independent, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they become depressed about the human condition.

McEwan tells the story in the context of an alternate history, a form used to great advantage by Kingsley Amis in The Alteration and Philip K. Dick in The Man in the High Castle to explore how history shapes life. The story takes place during the Falklands War, a miserable time for the British Navy, although McEwan imagines it to have been more miserable than it was — the British Navy is defeated and steams home in shame. Other changes in the world include an American decision not to drop the Bomb on Japan, the Beatles’ decision to reunite after 15 years, Jimmy Carter’s reelection to a second term, and Alan Turing’s survival into old age, allowing him to solve P versus NP and introduce a new age of computing.

Thanks to Turing, artificial humans called Adam and Eve are on the market in 1982. Science fiction stories about artificial humans typically focus on whether an artificial creation that develops self-awareness and seems to have (or desire) free will should be given the status of a natural human. McEwan’s story addresses that conundrum but gives it a twist. When his Adams and Eves become self-aware, they struggle with existentialism. Some give themselves a robotic form of lobotomy, perhaps because they are unable to live with the pointlessness and futility of human life, perhaps because they are simply disappointed by humans.  

The novel’s narrator, Charlie, impulsively blows his inheritance on an Adam. Adam quickly warns Charlie that his upstairs neighbor, Miranda, is a malicious liar. Charlie and Miranda have developed an amiable companionship. On the day Adam pronounces his warning, Charlie shuts off Adam and sleeps with Miranda.

Insecurity soon sets in and Charlie wonders how Adam could have judged Miranda without ever meeting her. Perhaps Adam is intuitive, a proposition that gives McEwan an opportunity to explore both the history of Artificial Intelligence and the difference between computing and intuiting (if a difference actually exists). McEwan later explores the nature of self, recognizing that neuroscientists and philosophers are debating whether the concept has meaning. In the meantime, Charlie and Miranda each complete one-half of a checklist of attributes that will program Adam’s personality, the digital equivalent of giving him their combined genes.

Charlie begins his own investigation of Miranda, although most of the information he finds pertains to her father, an “old-style literary curmudgeon” who detests technology. Of course, Miranda is curious about the biologically correct Adam, and it does not take long before Charlie wonders whether he is being “cuckolded by an artefact.” Whether or not his suspicions are founded, the question opens the door to a discussion of “robot ethics,” the notion that properly programmed beings will behave more scrupulously than ethically-challenged humans. Can a machine betray its owner? Unlike Adam, Miranda has no owner, so can the machine be blamed if she wants to test its performance?

Charlie and Adam (mostly Adam) have wide-ranging discussions of quantum mechanics, haikus, the limits of human understanding (particularly the understanding of other humans) as informed by literary traditions, and the future of collective thought. Charlie has a couple of discussions with Alan Turing about the nature of artificial intelligence and how it might react to human intelligence which, despite having the ability to solve problems like poverty and global warming, chooses not to do so. Humans know how to live with despair. Can machines learn to do live with their despair of humans? Turing explains that he once thought the body was nothing more than a machine, but changed his mind after facing chemical castration as a criminal punishment for being gay. (In this history, Turing rejected the punishment. In history as we know it, he accepted castration and committed suicide two years later.)

So this is a largely a novel of philosophy, but it also has a lively plot. Part of the plot concerns the false accusation (made with — the accuser imagines although the reader might not — a noble purpose) and its potential consequences. Another part of the plot concerns atonement. Another is a love story, including the possibility of an instant “two daddy” family as Charlie, Miranda, and Adam meet a young boy who needs foster care. The fact that Miranda’s father likes Adam more than Charlie (and is mistaken about which is the actual human) adds a comedic wrinkle to the romance, as does Charlie’s concern that becoming a father would be “a dereliction of duty to a larger purpose, assuming I could find one.”

In the end, Adam is a better person than a human would ever be, but that might also be his tragic flaw. Adam does not believe in revenge or greed and, while most humans would agree with him, he acts in accordance with his beliefs, which humans too rarely do. Yet humanity might not be well served by the inhuman rectitude and logic of a robot. The novel asks readers to decide whether rectitude should ever give way to friendship and loyalty, a concept that may separate human minds from calculators. All of that — as always, McEwan manages to stuff a lot into a fairly small package — adds up to an engaging, thought-provoking novel.

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Nutshell by Ian McEwan

Published by Doubleday/Nan A. Talese on September 13, 2016

The only likable character in Nutshell is a fetus. Fortunately, he’s an exceptionally bright fetus with a rich vocabulary. His mother and father separated after his conception. His father, a poet, has a relationship of some sort with a student. His mother is sleeping with his father’s brother. His mother and brother have a murderous intent, which provides Nutshell’s plot.

In prose that celebrates the richness of the English language, Ian McEwan tells the story from the unborn child’s point of view. The narrator has traditional notions of how parents should behave and is distressed that his own are not up to the task, but while residing in his mother’s womb, he cannot help but love her. Unfortunately for him, occasional kicks when his mother is misbehaving are an ineffective method of influencing her behavior. Yet even a fetus is not without resources.

As always, McEwan’s prose is a treat to be savored. Nutshell also showcases his wit. The narrator has extensive insight into the ways of the world, thanks to the knowledge he has absorbed as his mother listens to talk radio and self-improvement tapes. In addition to parenting, the fetal narrator shares his wry opinions about hope and faith and hatred, as well as current events, culture, sex, and the merits of the wines that his mother consumes.

An inspector with Columbo-like mannerisms adds to the humor. Nutshell is a short novel, not as substantial or dramatic as most of McEwan’s other books, but brevity assures that every word counts in a fun novel that works its way to a satisfying conclusion that manages to be both surprising and inevitable.

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Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

First published in Great Britain in 2012; published by Nan A. Talese on November 13, 2012

Intellectually interesting more than emotionally engaging (until, perhaps, the very last pages), Sweet Tooth tells a languid tale before taking a surprising twist that alters the reader's perspective of everything that passed before.

In 1972, Serena Frome graduates Cambridge with an undistinguished third in maths. On the strength of some anti-communist essays she's written and a recommendation from a history professor with whom she is having an affair, Serena is recruited to work for the British security service. Although she's initially treated as a clerk and servant girl, her interest in modern literature draws the attention of her superiors, who are launching a new project to attract and fund young writers who reliably promote democratic ideals, as least as those ideals are envisioned by the security service. The goal is to create a counterweight against the left-wing bent of British intellectuals without overtly influencing the content of the writing. The project's code name is Sweet Tooth.

Serena's first task is to vet Thomas Haley, the only writer of fiction that Sweet Tooth is considering. Serena reads Haley's published stories, giving Ian McEwan the opportunity to tell those stories in outline form -- a sort of literary bonus for the reader, who is treated not just to McEwan's novel but to unrelated stories within the novel. Yet the stories are also a tool to open up Serena; while Serena examines Haley's stories, the reader examines Serena. The conclusions Serena draws from Haley's stories tell the reader as much about Serena as the stories tell Serena about Haley.

Serena has a tendency to become ridiculously attached to men she barely knows. Since she believes she knows Haley, having read his stories, it is in keeping with her character that she becomes obsessed with him, a process that starts before they meet. An earlier obsession led to an unhappy affair with the professor who introduced her to the security service, a man who initially seems to play a tangential role in the novel, only to resurface in a way that forces Serena to rethink their relationship. The need to rethink relationships is a constant in Sweet Tooth. It happens again when Serena flirts with her superior, and still again when she becomes attached to Haley, putting her career and Haley's integrity at risk.

Despite McEwan's customary winning prose, my initial reaction to Sweet Tooth was one of indifference. I was never able to warm up to the character of Serena. While that troubled me, by the novel's end I understood my reaction -- it is exactly the reaction McEwan intended. I suppose it is a mark of literary genius that McEwan was able to fashion a character who is full of insecurities, fearful (with some justification) that she is shallow and dull, easily manipulated, politically myopic, a bit judgmental (even snobbish), and ethically challenged -- in short, a less than admirable character who, for many small reasons, isn't easy to like -- while making it possible, at the novel's end, for the reader to view the character with a sympathetic eye. The misdirection that McEwan employs is quite remarkable. More than that I cannot say without spoiling the surprise.

Sweet Tooth gives McEwan the opportunity to address invention, the indispensable tool of both writer and spy. The novel's greater theme is the cultural cold war, the indecency of governmental attempts to manipulate (however indirectly) the content of fiction, film, or journalism, and the blow to artistic integrity that results when the government promotes art for propagandistic reasons. All of that is interesting, but it is McEwan's deft manipulation of the characters and plot that finally won me over. While it was difficult to set aside the chilliness I felt while reading most of the novel, in the end I admired the cunning way in which McEwan structured the story.

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Atonement by Ian McEwan

First published in 2001

In the first and best of Atonement's three parts, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis (a precocious, dramatic, attention-seeking kid) sees her older sister flirting with Robbie Turner, the son of their servant, and imagines that something adult is happening, something she fears and doesn’t quite understand.  She later intercepts a letter Robbie has written to her sister that describes some lewd fantasies.  Convinced that Robbie is deranged, and later seeing him alone with her sister in the family library, Briony makes an accusation that unjustly derails Robbie's life.  The novel's second part follows Robbie for a period of time during his war service.  The third part brings us back to Briony and her act of atonement that gives the novel its title.

The novel's first section, with its familiar description of British aristocracy, builds suspense as sharply written characters follow inexorable paths to tragedy. It places interesting characters in conflict, it creates dramatic tension, and the writing is brilliant. The second section is less impressive:  a conventional war story, well told but in a familiar way. The characters have a dusty feel, as if they had already slogged through other war novels and were getting tired of it. The final section -- the atonement  -- made use of an annoying plot device and ultimately seemed anticlimactic.

Atonement never regains the momentum it loses when it switches its focus from the accusation to the war. The novel seems to be setting up a dramatic payoff in the final section that never comes; it didn't grab me or move me, didn't convince me that real people would behave as the characters do. On the strength of its first section and occasional passages of strong writing in the second and third, I recommend the novel, but the disappointing finish prevents me from recommending it highly.

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