Book of the week: The Humans - Matt Haig


The Humans- Matt Haig 

  I know I am a bit late to jump on the bandwagon here because people have been raving about this book for ages but I am not going to let that stop me. It was always one I'd considered reading but somehow it had never made it home with me. I was only pages into it and I knew this was going to be my book of the week which was a promising start by all accounts.

 The story centres around a Professor Andrew Martin who solves the world's greatest mathematical riddle and then disappears and I could just leave it there because I am afraid of spoiling the story but it's difficult to describe the richness of the plot without giving a little bit more. An alien has arrived on earth and taken on the form of Professor Andrew Martin because the riddle he has solved has troubling consequences and so this imposter has been tasked with finding out who he has shared his discovery with and eradicating them.

 The trouble with the plot description I have just given you (and trust me I have tried to describe it a million different ways) is that you might write it off as science fiction and go read something else instead and that would be a terrible shame because you would have passed up one of the funniest and most thought provoking books I have encountered in quite some time.

 The beauty of a book like The humans is that Matt Haig has rightly seized the opportunity to see the human race as we must appear to outsiders and we do not fare well. He used this viewpoint to poke fun at some the stranger habits we are all guilty of indulging in but as the alien in this story becomes less critical in his view of those around him and begins to open himself up to feelings, I found I softened towards him also. Instead of just laughing at his many faux-pas and misunderstandings, I wished him well and wanted it all to work out in his favour.

 In one way this about an alien torn between his duty and his new found impulses but in another this is about all of the outsiders, any of us that have found ourselves on the fringe of society looking in. Matt Haig writes about this quite delicately and after a time you forget that Professor Andrew is not himself anymore because it starts to sound like having his body taken over by an alien might be the best thing that ever happened in his life.

 The Humans is funny, and sweet and interesting. The whole fish out of water aspect made me think of Graeme Simsions 'The Rosie Project' and I am sure fans of that book would find equal joy in this one. 

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