REVIEW:

(Earmuffs, family members.)

You know how you think your family is pretty normal until you bring someone over to meet them and you see everything and everyone anew through his eyes? And suddenly you realize not only is your family not normal but in fact populated by circus monkeys? But they’re YOUR circus monkeys, so even if that outsider has a point or two about their weirdness he better keep his big trap shut?

That’s pretty much what happens in Matt Haig’s humorous yet heartwarming novel, The Humans, though in this case your family is the human race and the outsider is an alien. He astutely observes things like, “Let’s not forget The Things They Do to Make Themselves Happy That Actually Make Them Miserable. This is an infinite list. It includes shopping, watching TV, taking the better job, getting the bigger house, educating their young, making their skin look mildly less old, and harboring a vague desire to believe there might be a meaning to it all.”

While science fiction isn’t my go-to genre, I found The Humans to be very accessible given its present-day Earth setting. This is a sleeper of a novel that will continue to gain status as a modern classic as the years go by. Matt Haig is a must-read author for me, as his books make me feel understood, uplifted, and - you guessed it - human.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

Body-snatching has never been so heartwarming.

The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable novel about alien abduction, mathematics, and that most interesting subject of all: ourselves. Combine Douglas Adams’s irreverent take on life, the universe, and everything with a genuinely moving love story, and you have some idea of the humor, originality, and poignancy of Matt Haig’s beloved novel.

Our hero, Professor Andrew Martin, is dead before the book even begins. As it turns out, though, he wasn’t a very nice man - as the alien imposter who now occupies his body discovers. Sent to Earth to destroy evidence that Andrew had solved a major mathematical problem, the alien soon finds himself learning more about the professor, his family, and “the humans” than he ever expected. When he begins to fall for his own wife and son - who have no idea he’s not the real Andrew - the alien must choose between completing his mission and returning home or finding a new home right here on Earth.