I have made this sound more philosophical than it is. And I am not doing the novel justice. Haig does all this with a very light touch, keeping a steady dose of unassuming British humor. The plot is kept entertaining though its overall nature is very predictable, but as Haig takes pains to show, the beauty is in the small details. That is what makes the human species worth preserving. At first glance no alien race would be able to resist the temptation to exterminate a dangerous, almost rabid, species like ours. Given time, we just might charm them though. You have the power to stop time. You do it by kissing. Or listening to music. Music, by the way, is how you see things you can’t otherwise see. It is the most advanced thing you have. It is a superpower. Keep up with the bass guitar. You are good at it. Join a band. Haig strikes exactly the right tone of bemusement, discovery, and wonder in creating what is ultimately a sweet-spirited celebration of humanity and the trials and triumphs of being human. The result is a thought-provoking, compulsively readable delight. Booklist The Humans" is the story of an alien who is sent to Earth to eliminate all traces of the newly found proof of the Reimann hypothesis, which is said to be too powerful and dangerous knowledge for an immature species as us. The alien possesses the mathematician who proves the hypothesis, a professor at a prestigious university, who is also having a lot of family problems. Good premise, but you can see where it is heading.

Pfft, and just like that Professor Andrew Martin is dead! But, and it's a huge reason for this book but, what used to be well-known and lauded mathematician Professor Andrew Martin is running naked down a motorway mostly because he's scared of rain! 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.” When an extra-terrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete the gruesome task assigned him and hurry home to his own utopian planet, where everyone is omniscient and immortal. Pretending that he suffers from amnesia, he has to ferret out information by asking questions, for instance, from Martin’s wife Isobel. Had Martin told her about his solution? Had he mentioned it to their moody, suicidal and aggressive sixteen-year-old son Gulliver? By using Martin’s (to him very old-fashioned) computer, the narrator sees that Martin had communicated his discovery to a Professor Daniel Russell.At times the movie feels like " Hereditary" without the supernatural elements and gore. It's a psychological horror movie about the ordinary miseries and compromises of family. You can feel the tension radiating from all of them, as if they were mortals being watched by ghosts, or ghosts being observed by parapsychologists: blobs of energy whose every shift in feeling registers as a change in color temperature. Does anyone think that the author is making a comment on our tendancy to do the same with the stewardship we have on this planet and those that depend on it? I don't know if it got me angry because they could so casually snuff out human life or because they thought they were better than us when in fact they were the same. The Truth Pixie Goes to School (Canongate Books, 2019) illustrated by Chris Mould LCCN 2020-476813 ISBN 9781786898265

Now occupying the body of the Professor, however, the alien must learn to fend for himself on a foreign planet. This involves getting used to his new life as ‘Andrew’; discovering more about the former Professor’s wife (with whom he falls in love); and his son (who helps him understand what fatherhood is about); further complicated by the countless other observations the alien makes about humans and all their fascinating quirks. It’s this thought-provoking angle behind The Humans which allows it to find a winning formula, making full use of its outlandish premise. A lot of this could be construed as sappy -- the bonding with the dog, the life lessons list and all that. And it was. But I lapped it up.No one really fits in, so almost everyone fits in’ ... Haig at home in Brighton. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian With all these inconsistencies and problems, I found it hard to read this clichéd and predictable story. I found the that the humour and wit of this book came down to the same inane memes that your aunt will share on Facebook: I hate Mondays humour, only my dog understands me humour, kids these days humour. The philosophical, worldly observations were as deep as those given on a motivational calendar. threatens the stability of the planet who must also cope with the home life which accompanies his task. [ citation needed]

I wasn’t that interested in the mathematics aspect, but I did enjoy most of the various observations about humanity. I just had trouble buying into some of those observations coming the way they did from the character they did at the time they did. The long list of “Advice for a Human” did get tedious for me though. I liked it better mixed in with the story rather than in one concentrated dose. This book kind of reminds me of We Are the Ants in that way. It's a coming of age story that involves aliens... and it has an extremely negative and pessimistic view of the world and humanity, until the main character slowly reaches an arc when they realize how beautiful and wonderful and meaningful life on Earth can be. It has the same overall message, which is probably why I loved this book so much. Matt Haig is a supreme talent and a writer to cherish, and The Humans is undoubtedly his magnum opus" ( Guardian) I found this novel to be very clever, observant, and highly thought-provoking. Matt Haig is a clever author to have written it, and I loved how he - together with his multiple observations on the human race - was able to provide us with some truths on life and how we live it that you don’t often think about in everyday life. It didn’t at any point become to clichéd in my eyes - instead, it turned into an honest and heart-warming story that I truly appreciated.No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you. Tragedy is just comedy that hasn’t come to fruition. One day we will laugh at this. We will laugh at everything.