The Humans

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I might have found this book funnier if I had never seen stand-up comedy. Yes, human beings and the human condition are weird, screwed-up, nonsensical, etc. That's 90% of comedy - laughing at ourselves and at people we recognize in the routines. He is determined to stand up to “mental health snobbery … When you’re feeling a bit rough and ropey, and your mind is distracted, you can’t absorb the most highbrow text. You’re not there reading Freud and Jung and Lacan. A pop song can save your life. An episode of Friends can change your life. But when it’s in the world of books, it becomes this snobfest. I’m resistant to that. I also like confusing people, so I’ll do my big, corny, sentimental, puppy-dog line and then I’ll write a chapter about Aristotle.” I never say I’m a happy person ... It imposes certain expectations

a b "Matt Haig: "We live in a world designed to make us feel we're constantly missing out" ". Cambridge News. 2 April 2015 . Retrieved 2 October 2016.

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If there’s one thing I would want to change in this story, it would be the ending. It was a meaningful closure, but it could have been better if I saw more of it, like what would happen when he arrived at that place. One more chapter would have been so amazing. Martin Wroe (10 April 2015). "Now Me's message to Then Me". Church Times . Retrieved 16 August 2022. Which is to say: don't kill yourself. Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars.”

The Humans is told from the point of view of an alien sent to Earth to dispose of new mathematical understandings which could help the human race to make significant scientific advances. The fun in the book is due to this alien's opinions of us, the way we look and the way we live.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. Starred Review, Booklist But he made such a big deal about how he was the first of his kind to kill their own kind since forever ago. Seems like his people would find that a big deal, too. Maybe that is what beauty was, for humans. Accidents, imperfections, placed inside a pretty pattern. Asymmetry. The defiance of mathematics.” Everything in the Brighton garden looks rosy, whatever the Haig-haters might say about The Comfort Book. A Boy Called Christmas has been made into a film that will be released this year – just before Christmas, naturally – while a film of his 2017 novel How to Stop Time is being developed by Benedict Cumberbatch’s production company. Peanut butter sandwiches go perfectly well with a glass of white wine. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise...

although it was written to Gulliver from Andrew, I loved the chapter titled "Advice for a human" (very poignant). A quark is not the smallest thing. The wish you have on your death-bed – to have worked harder – that is the smallest thing. Because it won’t be there. Matt Haig is a supreme talent and a writer to cherish, and The Humans is undoubtedly his magnum opus" ( Guardian) When an extraterrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a leading mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor wants to complete his task and return home to his planet and a utopian society of immortality and infinite knowledge.Haig’s unexpectedly raw tale of love, belonging, and peanut butter… It’s funny, clever and quite, quite lovely. Sam Baker, The Sunday Times Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode. The alien confusion and observations are amusing but could get repetitive so I hope that will develop a little more.