The Humans by Matt HaigMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a slow starter for me, but once I got into it I must have devoured it in about two days.
The premise it quite unusual, an alien is sent to Earth to inhabit the body of Andrew Martin in order to prevent the leak of his ground breaking prime number theory.
I must admit, the majority of the maths stuff went over my head, but that's fine, maths doesn't interest me greatly but I gather that it's important.
What I did enjoy was the alien trying to assimilate to human life, learning about clothes and social etiquette and realising that there is more to the language than spoken word.
This book essentially sums up what it is like to be human, the things we enjoy, the actions we take to enjoy, being loved, being taken care of, belonging. All of those things that we take for granted as every day flies past. It also puts into perspective how short life is. 30,000 days is all we have to make our stamp on the world.
The reason it isn't five stars is because for me it took too long to get to the interesting bits. We spent a great deal of time 'faffing' and yes, that is a technical term. Also, the alien went from 'I must kill these people' to 'I want to be part of this family' a little too quickly for me. I feel like there needed to be more internal conflict. And finally, as great as this book is at highlighting the wonderfulness of humans, by the end it did feel a little preachy. Although I will take some things from this novel, such as the greatness of peanut butter sandwiches and white wine.
At the end Haig said he was working on a script for a film which I think will be really interesting.
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