This was a good, big and difficult book.
The basic plot premise is that a man buys a humanoid type machine, I believe for £85k. He and his girlfriend activate it and are allowed to attribute characteristics to it which they share, so it has some characteristics of a child of theirs. The machine, named Adam, there are only about 25 in existence and 13 of these are called Eve, gradually evolves into semi human forms and consciousness.
Meanwhile McEwan is bending time quite alarmingly; the book is set in the late 1970’s when Thatcher is prime minister but she loses the Falklands War, and is toppled as PM by Tony Benn, who is then assassinated and replaced by Denis Healey.
Bits of 2020 technology such as self drive cars are apparently active and operational 40 years before their time. The machine has been developed by the long dead Alan Turing, who appears in the book. It seems to develop into an almost Christ like figure, obsessed by the logic of truth and justice and this leads his owner to destroy him, as his actions are interfering with the lives he and his girlfriend have chosen.
Good, big and difficult, but a definite re-read.
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