Just Finished Reading: The Humans by Matt Haig (FP: 2013) [293pp] 

It was a punishment assignment, that was obvious from the start. His briefing was practically non-existent, he didn’t even know the language though, luckily, he was a quick learner. When they arrested him later – for not wearing cloths, how ridiculous! - he managed to cover his many mistakes with a simple phrased he’d picked up from Cosmopolitan: Nervous Breakdown. It was (almost) literally a get out of jail free card, well that and a bit of technologically enhanced hypnotism. It took a while longer to realise that they’d also lied to him. He’d just assumed that everything he ‘knew’ (or it turned out thought he’d known) was true, indeed obvious. It wasn’t. Sure, humans were indeed violent creatures who were wholly ignorant of how the Universe really worked but there was more to them than that. They had music, the poetry of Emily Dickenson and a wonderful food called ‘crunchy peanut butter’. They also, rather bizarrely, cared for their children and even knew who their parents were. Probably because of that oddness they also had something called ‘love’ but all of that was distracting from the mission.  

The real Dr Andrew Martin, who he had replaced soon after he was taken, had achieved a mathematical breakthrough. If allowed to be known it would propel humanity beyond its wildest dreams, into their Solar system and beyond into the greater Galaxy beyond. Such a thing could simply not be allowed to happen. The new ‘Andrew Martin’ would need to find out who knew about the breakthrough and eliminate them. Then, to make sure another breakthrough didn’t occur he needed to destroy all and any evidence. To be particular, he had been ordered to eliminate Andrew Martin’s wife and teenage son – just in case. That’s where the problems started and Newton the dog wasn’t exactly helping either... 

Sandwiched between a pair of serious books (the second of which is reviewed on Monday) I thought I’d drop in something silly, something different. This was definitely ‘it’. This is my 3rd book by this author and again I was not disappointed. He has the kind of off-beat quirky mind that I like – a lot. It would be easy to compare the author to Douglas Adams and this book to ‘Hitchhiker's Guide’ but that would be a disservice all around. Both are ‘light’ SciFi, both are commentaries on the absurdity of human existence, and both are ironically funny – and there the comparison falls apart. Essentially this is a novel about human relationships seen from a very ‘outside’ PoV. It's about just how HARD it is to communicate with others, even if you live with them, even if you gave birth to them, even if you love them – most of the time anyway. It’s about owning your mistakes; it's about admitting failure and doubt and it’s about knowing how inadequate the word "sorry" is. It is, in fact, all about being human. Funny, sad, profound at times and endlessly thought provoking I really liked it. Highly recommended – but you might need a few tissues ready for the sad bits.