imijen 's review for:

The Humans by Matt Haig

3.0

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3.5 stars. I highly recommend reading this for the first few chapters alone. The beginning of this novel was just so much fun. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I laughed so much while reading a novel. A cynical and socially inept alien with a superiority complex lands on planet Earth, in a human disguise, and tries to make sense of what it means to be human. The humour is fantastic, as our alien narrator tries and fails at the most basic of human interactions and tasks. It's all a bit ridiculous and Haig fantastically uses this humour to point out the contradictory and nonsensical nature of many parts of modern life; from clothing to cars, food wrappers to magazines. The voice of our alien narrator at this stage is just terrific. Sadly, I felt he lost some of his charm as he gradually becomes more "human", which is ironic as Haig's overriding message is that life and humanity really isn't that bad. Not that I disagree with him on that point, but it all got a little heavy-handed, lovey-dovey and overly cliched for my liking towards the end. A whole novel like the first quarter to half would have been an easy 5 stars, just because of how much fun it was, but personally I couldn't enjoy the rest of it quite as much. Haig is a fantastic writer, however, and I can understand how much writing this novel must have helped him. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more by him!