Read with Me: The Humans by Matt Haig

Is it just me or did we blaze through January ’22 really fast? It seems like I just put out the list of books for my new little Read with Me project, and here we are at the end of the month, first book down.

So. I’m not going to write a formal review of the books. I really just want to pull a few of my thoughts together while the story is fresh in my mind, and then invite you to share your thoughts. I’m setting my own personal deadline to write a post by the end of each month. So here we are.

Haig’s The Humans was a lovely first book for the project.

I thought it was inventive, engaging, fun to read—and yet serious and thoughtful. I think it works for several reasons. First, the story itself—the plot—moves fast. From the very first scene when our unnamed narrator finds himself on earth as a reluctant, butt naked “40-year old newborn” and gets hit by a car, we know we’re in for a fun ride.

I do wish the alien narrator had a name (it would be easier to talk about him), but he kind of shoots through his new life in the body of Professor Andrew Martin like a pinball—colliding in one way or another with people in Andrew’s life. And yet, ht spends a good amount of time on his own with the wonderful dog Newton, listening to music, reading poetry, trying to make sense of it all.

“The last thing I listened to was a tune called “Clair de Lune” by Debussy. That was the closest representation of space I had ever heard, and I stood there, in the middle of the room, frozen with shock that a human could have made such a beautiful noise.

Because humans prove to be much more complex than his alien “employers” have judged.

“This beauty terrified me, an alien creature appearing out of nowhere. An ipsoid, bursting out of the desert. I had to keep believing everything that I had been told. That this was a species of ugliness and violence, beyond redemption.”

As the story unfolds our narrator grapples with this human duality: great love and beauty and terrible ugliness and violence . And of course all lead him to redemption. So many scenes we could talk about: the one with Daniel’s wife Tabitha crying over her dead husband. The bar scene watching football with Andrew’s best friend Ari. The night our narrator tries to carry out his orders and kill the son, Gulliver, but instead lets Gulliver beat him up—and then in the bathroom with Isobel as she cleans his wounds and he first feels connected to her. And then of course all the escalating scenes towards the end of his increasing heroic acts.

The story never lagged. And yet, I don’t think it’s the plot that makes this book.

It’s how and what our narrator learns. It’s his character that shines. His empathy and connection to everything—’the humans’, yes, but also art and the dog (can I just say how much I loved his relationship with Newton and not because I miss MY dog and need another!)

He grows as a person (a human) and learns how to love. And it doesn’t hurt at all that he is funny!

Not that he knows he’s funny. Which points to the literary device that made this book: irony.

[Being interviewed at the police station:]

“…But that doesn’t explain why you were walking naked around the grounds of Corpus Christi College. You are either off your head or a danger to society or both.”

“I do not like wearing clothes,” I said, with quite delicate precision. “They chafe. They are uncomfortable around my genitals.” And then, remembering all I had learned from Cosmopolitan magazine, I leaned in toward them and added what I thought would be the clincher. “They may seriously hinder my chances of achieving a tantric full-body orgasm.”

Not only does our narrator not see the humor of his own comments, but the whole structure of the book is built on irony. The irony of humans themselves—so ugly and so beautiful—the irony of how much humor we can find in a story that is essentially quite sad and touching.

[Leaving the bar after the football game with Ari:]

“That was great,” I lied, as we walked out of the grounds.

“Was it? We lost four nil.”

“Yes, but while I watched it, I didn’t think once about my mortality or the various other difficulties our mortal form will bring in later life.”

And of course, the irony of a story written by an author (Haig) for us, the audience, whose narrator is an alien who is also writing a story—about his encounter with humans—for an audience of fellow aliens, but in fact we are actually his real audience. The irony of how an alien helps us see ourselves more clearly.

[Conversation with alien “employers”:]

“What are you saying?”

“What I am saying is that it takes time to understand humans because they don’t understand themselves. They have been wearing clothes for so long. Metaphorical clothes. That is what I am talking about. That was the price of human civilization—to create it, they had to close the door on their true selves. And so they are lost, that is how I understand it.”

With that said, though, I will say that as a reader I was also a little too aware of Haig pulling the puppet strings. Perhaps the message was laid on too thick? I don’t know. It kind of brought me out of the story when I could see Haig being intentionally ironic—but then again, part of falling into story is to just go with it, to surrender to the illusion.

And it was a lovely illusion of a book.

I did really enjoy The Humans. The plot was flawless as he conflicts become more intense—until finally decisions have to be made. I loved our alien narrator. And I loved his important reflections on art and its inextricable link to humanity, oh yes, and the motif of clothes that keeps coming up—what we do to cover up our vulnerability—and how we relate to nature…but yeah, my favorite element had to be the dog.

This is what dogs liked to do, I discovered. They liked to run on grass, pretending they were free, shouting, “we’re free, we’re free, look, look, look how free we are!” at each other. It really was a sorry sight. But, I had to admit, it worked for them, and for Newton in particular. It was a collective illusion they had chosen to swallow and they were submitting to it wholeheartedly, without any nostalgia for their former wolf selves.”

I’ve always said dogs show us the way.

*****

So—do you agree or disagree with me? What did you see in the book? I’d love to know! Are there any questions in the reader’s guide (in the back) that you’d like to try to answer? Please – feel free to leave your thoughts on The Humans in the comments below.

FEBRUARY READ WITH ME: The Sentence by Louise Erdich

I am intrigued and can’t wait to read the next book—and I hope you will read it too! I will post my thoughts about it at the end of the month.

In the meantime, here’s what Amazon has to say:

“In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors. … A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

Come on—how can anyone resist?