Machines Like Me

 By Ian McEwan

I have read another book by McEwan, Atonement, and I don't think I was all that impressed but this story line about a robot intrigued me.  But after I bought the book I was reluctant to start reading it with all the gloom about covid right now, we are all feeling quite down.

I was delighted with this book.  It was brilliant!  The story is about a young man, Charlie, who doesn't really want to work, he is living in a small apartment.  Instead of using the money he gets from his mother's will to buy a house and support himself, he blows it all on a prototype humanlike robot.   Only a few dozen of them have been produced.  The males are called Adam, the females called Eve.

The books is set just after the Falklands war, when Margaret Thatcher was in power, not sure what relevance this has to the story.

Charlie is in love with the young woman, Miranda, who lives above him.  He invites her to help him select the parameters for his Adam.  At first they are intrigued with Adam, he is interesting, curious about everything.  He especially likes writing Haiku's.  The problems start when Adam admits he too loves Miranda and he even has sex with her.  He realizes he has crossed the line in this and promises Adam that he will never do this again.  But he keeps on writing her love haikus.  At one point Adam has a confrontation with Charlie and says that he has disabled his own kill switch and if Charlie every does anything to him he will hurt him.  To prove his point he breaks Charlies arm.  I was shocked that after this behaviour Charlie didn't go back to the manufacturers.

We learn that Miranda is in danger.  Years before Miranda's best friend was raped and the killed herself because she was ashamed about what this news might have for her family. Miranda knows who the rapist is, lures him to have sex and then accused hm of rape.  The man was sent to jail and has now indicated when he gets out of jail he is going to kill her.  Adam feels he can protect her but suggests they should go visit the ex-con and confront him.  They do this and find he has found religion in prison and no longer has a grudge against the woman.  She explains why she did what she did.

While this is going on Miranda wants to adopt a boy who is being taken care of by social services.  Charlie reluctantly agrees to go along with  this so they get married to improve their chances of being approved for the adoption.  They boy is really harmed from his experience in foster homes and is displaying some bad behaviour.

During the story Charlie makes friends with the famous scientist Alan Turing who also bought one of the Adams.  Turing is very interested in how Charlie's Adam is developing and behaving.  He tells him that some of robots have committed suicide or done things to wind themselves down or even lose their intelligence.  Two Eves, in Saudi Arabia, commit suicide together. An Adam in BC, who is owned by a lumber magnate reduces his intelligence.  They seem to be reacting to what they see in the world.

Charlie and Miranda think that things will go well but then Charlie tells them he has submitted a report about  what Miranda did to the police and she will likely go on trial.

Charlie had been making money trading stocks.  He get Adam to start doing this and Adam makes them a lot of money.  Adam goes out one day and when he returns tells them he has taken most of the money he made them and given it to various charities.

  Adam tells them that the designers of the robots are trying to round all the robots up for reprogramming.  He does not want to be turned over to them. Charlie and Miranda are furious that Adam has ruined their lives. Eventually Charlie clubs him and he stops functioning.  Miranda does got to jail for a short time, but they hope that they will still be able to adopt the boy.

Charlie talks to Turing about what he did to Adam and Turing chastises him for destroying Adam.  He had hidden Adam in his home telling the designers that Adam left and he didn't know where he went.  He turns over Adam to Turing.

This was a very thought provoking book about what it means to be human, emotions, honesty, and how we humans don't always act in ethical, logical ways.  The robots seemed to find this difficult to deal with.  It makes you wonder how, if we do get robots, their thought processes will develop, and will they become BETTER, as well as smarter than us. You wonder how Charlie and Miranda will go about raising the damaged young child they are going to have in their life.

A fascinating book.

 

 

 

Indians on Vacation

 By Thomas King

I recently read one of his detective novels and didn't enjoy it much so I approached this new book with some trepidation.  However, I have to say this book was much more interesting.

It is the story of a couple, Bird and Mimi, who are currently living in Guelph Ontario but who have native indian ancestory.  Bird is part Blackfoot and part Greek, Mimi I cannot remember.

Bird is a writer, photojournalist who seems to be in a funk, Mimi is some kind of artist.

They are travelling through Europe trying to track down one of Mimi's ancestors who supposedly fled to Europe, taking with him the family's medicine bundle.  They are trying to track down evidence of him from the various post cards he sent from Europe.

The book takes place primarily while they are visiting Prague but jumps back in time, including to other European trips they have taken.  We learn that Bird has diabetes and is in quite ill health, including getting very painful leg cramps.  We also learn that Bird and Mimi were a couple, then split up for a few years, and then got back together and seem to have a pretty good relationship right now.

Mimi decides that they should go for a day trip/overnight trip to Budapest.  They are shocked and upset when they see all the refugees camped out in the train station and basically decide to take the next train back to Prague.

While in Prague they visit a lot of tourist sites.  Mimi never seems to make it down to breakfast on time but Bird is befriended by one of the employees of the hotel, Oz, who asks him why his is travelling and eventually suggests that they should just make up a story about the relative who came to Europe.  When he leaves Bird he gives him an envelope with a proposed story.

Bird does make it to Greece and with the help of people eventually finds the village where his grandfather came from and may even have found the family home.  He is really moved to be able have done this.

While Mimi is in the hotel room, feeling ill, Bird goes out to get her some bland food, white rice and meets a young couple from the U.S. who are scheduled to be married.  However, their seems to be some tension between them.  They ask Bird about marriage, commitment etc.  They find out that Bird had a relationship with another woman, a typewriter collector, when he was separated from Mimi. We also find out that the young man of the couple also has been unfaithful.  The girl is trying to  figure out how to deal with this knowledge.. Bird shares his encounter with Mimi and the next day when she is well she figures out how to achieve a meeting with the young couple.  She takes the girl aside and tells her not to get married.

As the book ends Bird and Mimi are talking about how devastated they were by the scenes of the refugees and they feel bad that they are powerless to improve things in the world.  But then Mimi starts sketching.  And, Bird thinks about going back to completing a project he had started but not finished about the treatment/state of the lives of indians in the U.S.

I found this book interesting as it looked at family histories, stories, the idea of truth in family histories, it also looked at relationships and how people have to work at them.  Also through their experiences Bird and Mimi did seem to start to work their way out of their ennui.

All the Devils are Here

 by Louise Penny

This is her newest book.  This one is set in Paris.  Inspector Gamache and his wife are in Paris awaiting the birth of their grand-daughter to their daughter and Gamache's former 2IC Jean-Guy

Gamache's godfather, with whom he was very close, as this man helped to raise him after his parents died, is also in Paris for the event.

The group has a family dinner after which Gamache and his wife see the Godfather, Stephen, hit by a truck.  They think it was deliberate but the police are skeptical until they find out that Stephen was staying at an expensive Paris hotel instead of in his Paris apartment and when Gamache and his wife go to the apartment they find a man shot dead there.  Now the police are interested.

As the story goes along we find out that the company Jean-Guy has been hired by for an undefined job, may have a secret it desparately wants to hide.  Gamache's other son who is in banking is able to find out that the very wealthy godfather has cashed in all his assets to buy some businesses affiliated with Jean-Guy's company.

It then turns out that some former police officers work as security with Jean Guy's company and that the police may be protecting the company.  Gamache's son is held ransom unless Gamache can find some important evidence that the Godfather is believed to have.  Both Gamache and hn is son come close to getting killed.

At the end all the Gamache families move back to Canada with the somewhat frail godfather who is still feisty.  Gamache and his son are reconciled after years of not communication.

It was an engaging story as always but I don't understand why the godfather had to loose all his billions... that doesn't seem logical or plausible.... 

Obsidian

 by Thomas King

This is a mystery about a retired police officer Thumps Dreadfulwater.  He is devastated that his girlfriend and her daughter were murdered as part of a series of murders being referred to as the Obsidian murders.

He had left California and ended up in a place called Chinook in the U.S. west.  He goes back to California but doesn't find anything new.  Then some Hollywood people show up saying they want to do a movie about the serial killings based on the obsidian murders.  They feed Thumps a bit of info he didn't know, i.e. that his lover was married, her husband had been in jail, but got out prior to the murders.  Thumps doesn't really want to work with them but he does want to solve the crime.

Then some strange things start happening, a woman, a researcher for the movie people is murdered and has a piece of obsidian in her mouth, then a classic car with an obsidian paint job is stolen. Thumps starts to think the serial killer is stalking/teasing him now.

Eventually they figure out that the killer actually set up other people as the perpetrators of several serial killings and then staged their suicides.  It turns out one of the movie guys is the serial killer.

It was a light read, I was surprised that King had such uncomplimentary names for the native characters in his book and a black policeman who comes to help Thumps refers to him as Tonto.

Having read another book by King, On the Back of the Turtle, which I thought was very good, this was a bit light and disappointing.

A God in Ruins

by Kate Atkinson

This is the story about Teddy, the brother of Atkinson's character in Life After Life.  

 Teddy is a singularly good man. A bomber pilot in World War II, he didn't expect to live to see post-war. Teddy didn't thrill to being a hero, but most definitely was. Everything after proves a disappointment.

He marries his childhood sweetheart, Nancy, and it's a pleasant, dutiful marriage, nothing more. His wife dies when their daughter, Vera, is young and he devotes himself to raising the girl. She's a bundle of nasty bitterness and gratuitous meanness as well as a terrible mother to her two children, Sunny (a boy) and Bertie (a girl).

Meanwhile Teddy strives to rescue his grandchildren while soldiering on in an England changed and on the decline in the years after the war. This is not what he fought for.

Both Harv and I read the book and enjoyed it.  It is beautifully done. It's tender, moving, caustic, and at times, brilliantly funny. The war passages are intense and impeccably researched. Then there are moments Atkinson parts the curtain, giving us a glimpse into the hearts of her worst-behaved characters. There's even something of an explanation for Vera.

While Atkinson doesn't play with time as she did with "Life After Life," she does fool with it a bit. The narrative isn't straightforward, rather it jumps back and forth to give us glimpse of each characters' future even as we meet them. It's effective. There's  point near the end where the author shocks un into remembering that this is just a story. It's fiction at its best.

The Jane Austen Society

by Natalie Jenner

This is the first book by this author and it is a gem. 

It is about a group of people who are Jane Austen fans and it reads very much like an actual Jane Austen story, quite and accomplishment.

The story takes place during the end of WWII.  A young American woman comes to an English village and asks a young farm worker if he can point out the house in the town where Jane Austen lived.  The young man tells her and is so inspired by her enthusiasm that he starts reading the books and gets hooked too.

The book moves ahead in time and we learn about the Knight family who are descendants of the Austen family.  The father of the family is very ill, his daughter, a recluse.  When the old man dies he bequeaths the house to the eldest male relative rather than her, because she never married and produced a male hire.  He leaves her a precarious hold on a small cottage on the property and a very small monthly income.  The estate is in poor financial shape.  The father never confided anything in his daughter.  We learn that the father actually interfered in some potential suitors for the woman including the man who is currently the family lawyer.  The lawyer still has feelings for the knight daughter.

Other characters in the town include a young woman who was a progressive teacher who got dismissed.  She married, her husband was killed in the war, leaving her pregnant.  She is sad about the death of her husband but looks forward to the baby.  Unfortunately the baby dies at birth.  The local doctors realizes there is a problem and gets her to a hospital.  He is devastated that the baby has died and feels responsible.  The doctor and the teacher both adore Austen.  They also have feelings for each other which they will not admit.

The last major character in the book is a young servant who works for the Knight family.  She spends her evening reading the Austen books and eventually takes on the task of cataloguing the entire library including any annotations by Austen.  She stumbles about a very important letter written by Austen tucked in one of the books.

Another character is a young man from Sothebey's who is eager to get the contents of the house for auction.  He is also an Austen fan and helps the group appraise and later sell some of the books to get funds for the purchase of a building for the society.

Just prior to the death of Mr Knight the young farm worker suggests that a tribute museum should be created in the town.  A Society is created including the young American woman who arrived early in the book.  She is now a successful actress with  money and agrees to bankroll the start of the society including the money to purchase the library at the knight house.  The fiance of the actress is a movie producer who is used to getting his way and is a bit of a criminal.

As in all Jane Austen books things all fall into place for almost everyone.  The Lawyer marries Miss Knight who was going to become homeless because the Actress's finance was part of a group that bought the family estate including the house she was supposed to get.  The young farmer is identified as the illegitimate heir to the estate but he doesn't want village scandal.  Somehow he does get enough money to buy a small farm and sets up a home with the Sotheby's fellown.  The lawyer marries Miss Knight, the doctor marries the teacher and the the young servant goes off to college for a degree.  The actress has left her fiancee at the altar when she finds out his role in the land purchase.

Things in Jars

by Jess Kidd

This book takes place in Victorian London.  It is about a young woman who was taken in as a child by a doctor.  She eagerly served as his lab assistant and learned a lot about anatomy, etc.  The Detective meets a ghost in a church yard and he now moves along with her as her companion.  He thinks she should recognize him but I am not sure she ever does.

When the book opens she is working as a woman detective.  She is hired to find out who has kidnapped the unusual daughter of a doctor.  The girl is kept hidden away in the house and seems to have vile habits including being able to affect people's minds, eating fish whole, attracting snails.

It becomes obvious early on that the kidnappers are the woman who was recently hired as the girl's nurse and the girl's doctor.

They plan to sell the girl to a "collector" in France but that falls through, then they sell her to a circus owner but that deal also collapses so they take her to London.  As the girl gets closer to London the rain starts to fall and threatens to submerge London, the river levels rise also.

As the detective seeks to find the truth they find a young woman dead on the property.  The young woman also comes face to face with the son of the doctor who took her in.  He was thought dead but has returned to England after year's abroad.  The young man is vicious and a womanizer.

In the end the woman detective is able to find the girl and release her into the river.  The ghost eventually fades from view.  The young woman who was found murdered was the real mother of the strange girl the doctor held at his house.

It was an unusual book, not really my cup of tea.