![]() ![]() Narrative time, McEwan stresses in perhaps too much detail, is now. When her friend does not press charges after being raped, Miranda pretends to be the victim. Margaret Thatcher is usurped by a candidate keen on Britain withdrawing from the European Union. Self-driving cars co-exist with the Beatles. Alan Turing hasn't committed suicide he is the reclusive oracle who makes technological advances possible. Adam, a life-like robot, is purchased by the narrator, an anthropologist with an interest in electronics and in love with his intelligent neighbour, Miranda. This is what McEwan suggests in Machines Like Me. In our precarious but compulsive relationship with artificial intelligence, the human conditioning of narrative voice may be our best asset for when the machines take over. In his last novel, Nutshell, a foetus comes to terms with adultery. In Sweet Tooth, the only recourse available to a manipulated writer is to rewrite the narrative of the spy who tricked him. Mark and Adam are both in the process of developing personhood, and their differences in learning abilities contribute to the personhoods they establish. ![]() Having no say in how things come to pass is rehabilitated through a narrative voice. As Machines Like Me discusses the prospects of personhood, the characters of Mark, Charlie, and Adam come to represent the different ways it can be achieved. ![]()
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