August 16, 2013 / Leslie

Review – Audiobook: The Humans by Matt Haig

The Humans: A Novel
by Matt Haig
Narrated by Mark Meadows

Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Publish Date: July 2, 2013
Format: Audio, 8 hours | 11 minutes
Audio Listening Level: Easy
Rating: 4½ of 5

Quote from the Publisher:

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 go back home, to the planet he comes from, and a utopian society of immortality and infinite knowledge.

He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, the wars they witness on the news, and totally baffled by such concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this weird species than he has been led to believe.

My Thoughts:

Professor Andrew Martin has solved the Riemann Hypothesis, a complex mathematical problem that will allow humans to make rapid technological advances. A member of a highly evolved alien species is dispatched to earth to take over the professor’s body and destroy his work and anyone who knows of its existence. At first the alien is disgusted by humans and everything about them. But as he gets to know them better, a transformation begins to take place.

The human body he has taken over has a wife, a son and a dog. The alien understands the dog but the son and the wife are a different story. They immediately notice a personality shift and think he has had a mental breakdown. The professor was a snob with a strained relationship with his family, but the alien begins to enjoy having a wife and son, ultimately putting his mission in jeopardy.

The story is told in the first person from the point of view of the alien. His witty, dry and humorous observations are what makes it all work. The writing is clever and funny and the story prompts the reader to think: Why do humans act the way they do? When viewed through the prism of an out-of-this-galaxy observer’s eye, I began to wonder about that myself.

I listened to the audiobook which was superbly narrated by Mark Meadows. His voice, tone and inflections were perfect for the perplexed alien pretending to be a human. It was an easy and fun listening experience.

If you like the wittiness of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or the comedy of Third Rock From the Sun, then you will love this book. This is science fiction, but only in the sense that the protagonist is from another planet. The real story is about people, and what it is to be human. Highly recommended even for those who don’t read SciFi.

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Source: Review copy
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