What if the best way to understand humanity were to look at us through the eyes of someone who has absolutely no idea what we’re doing?
In The Humans by Matt Haig, an alien arrives on Earth with a rather dim view of the species he’s been sent to investigate. Humans are messy, irrational, violent, and inexplicably attached to things like family, poetry, and peanut butter. But as he settles into the life of a Cambridge mathematician, he begins to discover that there might be more to us than the data suggests.
My daughter gave me this book, and while it wasn’t necessarily one I would have picked up for myself, it turned out to be a fun, easy read with some genuinely lovely things to say about being alive. It’s not a particularly suspenseful story, and its emotional moments didn’t always land as deeply as they might have. But sometimes you don’t need a book to wreck you. Sometimes you just need a reminder that life is strange, people are complicated, and the ordinary things we take for granted are worth paying attention to.
*Spoilers will be hidden and labelled so you can choose to read or skip.
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Before Reading:
Where did I hear about this book: Received as gift
Curiosity or Awareness: Awareness
Would I read it if no one was talking about it? Yes
What I want from this book: I want a fun, feel-good book that offers something unexpected.
Hype Meter
Goodreads: 4.07 | StoryGraph: 4.01 | Fable: 4.04
My Take: Correctly-hyped.
Judge The Humans By Its Cover
The composition of The Humans cover art is rhythmic and balanced, using muted tones with bold colors. It brings to mind Jazz music and Pop art. The figures suggest snapshots of human life.
Color Story
Tangerine and rose kinda clash, but in a warm way that feels both artistic and oddly inviting.
Typography Notes
Smartly, the typography on The Humans cover is a handwritten script-style font that makes it feel human–approachable, and a bit messy.
Genre Signals
Not having any obvious signs of science fiction, the cover suggests general fiction or literary fiction.
Hidden Details
After reading The Humans, the subtle humor of the cover design makes sense. Take note that the design is a series of humans in squares and rectangles.
Mood Check
The Humans cover suggests a quirky, fun, possibly artistic experience.
Beyond the Dust Jacket
The Humans is divided into 3 parts (illustrated pages) with super short named chapters.
Interesting quotes and bits of poetry appear in some chapter headings.
Communication with alien hosts is typographically different than the main story.
Did the design affect whether I bought the book?
Nope, this one was a gift!
Story Snapshot
In Short
An alien arrives on Earth and takes the form of a prominent mathematician. He is disgusted by humans but slowly begins to see hope and beauty in their imperfection.
From the Publisher
The bestselling, award-winning author of The Midnight Library offers his funniest, most devastating dark comedy yet, a “silly, sad, suspenseful, and soulful” (Philadelphia Inquirer) novel that’s “full of heart” (Entertainment Weekly).
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 prominent mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete the gruesome task assigned him and hurry home to his own utopian planet, where everyone is omniscient and immortal.
He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, their capacity for murder and war, and is equally baffled by the concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this strange species than he had thought. Disguised as Martin, he drinks wine, reads poetry, develops an ear for rock music, and a taste for peanut butter. Slowly, unexpectedly, he forges bonds with Martin’s family. He begins to see hope and beauty in the humans’ imperfection, and begins to question the very mission that brought him there.
Praised by The New York Times as a “novelist of great seriousness and talent,” author Matt Haig delivers an unlikely story about human nature and the joy found in the messiness of life on Earth. The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable tale that playfully and movingly explores the ultimate subject—ourselves.
Lines I Highlighted
This was, I would later realize, a planet of things wrapped inside of things. Food inside clothing. Bodies inside wrappers. Contempt inside smiles. Everything was hidden away.
Characters I Followed Into Battle
The point-of-view character of The Humans is actually an alien who has no name, but he is living in the body of a man named Andrew Martin, a mathematician working at Cambridge in England. The alien has an objective to remove important information from Earth, assuming that having it will cause humans to destroy the universe. Along the way, he discovers and falls in love with humanity.
Lines I Highlighted
“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” –Emily Dickinson
Writing Style Notes
Haig’s writing style is clear and easily approachable.
There is a fair bit of humor infused in the beginning of the story, as our alien narrator navigates his first day on Earth. The tone becomes more serious after that, though there are moments of levity.
Despite the seriousness of the plot, tension remains low from beginning to end. While there are emotionally pivotal moments, they feel more endearing than fully moving. All that said, this is a gentle, easy read – neither a suspense nor a tear-jerker.
Lines I Highlighted
So this was love. Two life-forms in mutual reliance. I was meant to be thinking I was watching weakness, something to scorn, but I wasn’t thinking that at all.
Themes Living Rent-Free In My Head
- To be human is a complex and nuanced experience.
- First impressions are not always reliable.
- Look for anomalies in the data.
- “A paradox: The Things you don’t need to live–books, art, cinema, wine, and so on–are the things you need to live.”
Lines I Highlighted
Listening to music, I realized, was simply the pleasure of counting without realizing you were counting.
What Landed For Me
What Worked:
- Interesting premise
- Fun perspective
- Good life advice
What Didn’t Fully Click:
- Emotionally a little distant
- Themes felt a bit heavy-handed (trust readers with subtext)
Overall:
A heartwarming good time.
Lines I Highlighted
The humans are scared of nature and are greatly reassured when they can prove to themselves they have mastery over it.
Intentional Reading Reflection
My daughter bought me The Humans as a gift. It wasn’t something that I would likely have picked up for myself. I love receiving books from others, because they generally choose something they think I’d like, but ultimately it’s something they are interested in. (Probably because I read across genres, so it’s hard to tell what would resonate from a cover description).
I have read The Midnight Library also by Matt Haig, and his The Radley’s is on my TBR, so it is safe to assume I like his work. I wouldn’t put him in my absolute must-read authors list, but I know that when I read a book in his oeuvre, it will be well written and satisfying.
The Humans reads quickly. I finished within a day. Not only is it relatively short – under 300 pages, but it’s easy reading. There were a few moments when I noted a sense of lag, due to the dissipation of humor and lack of tension or suspense, but in the next pages something would happen to reengage me.
Overall, I’d call this an easy feel-good read. Something that fits nicely between more emotionally or mentally taxing reads as a literary “palette-cleanser.”
Lines I Highlighted
Some humans not only liked violence but craved it, I realized. Not because they wanted pain, but because they already had pain and wanted to be distracted from that kind of pauin with a lesser kind.
Cover Promise Rating
Did the cover make promises the story actually kept?
Yes! The cover seems even more effectively matched to the story after having read it.
Lines I Highlighted
Love is a way to love forever in a single moment, and it was also a way to see yourself as you had never actually seen yourself, and made you realize–having done so–that this view was a more meaningful one than any of your previous self-perceptions and self-deceptions.
Final Verdict
Read if you like:
- Alien encounters such as E.T., Contact, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Addams
- Heartwarming humanity stories like Remarkably Bright Creatures (See my review)
Skip if you dislike:
- Slow pacing, low-tension books
- If you are sensitive to depictions of self-harm or suicide
Lines I Highlighted
…at any time only point three percent of humans were actively doing something they liked doing, and even when they did so, they felt an intense guilt about it and were fervently promising themselves they’d be back doing something horrendously unpleasant very shortly.
Reading Debris
I read The Humans as part of my Playing Card Reading Challenge to fulfill the prompt: Read a love story not centered on romance. I think falling in love with humanity counts, even if there is some familiar and romantic love between characters.
The Humans has a lot of media references.
Books:
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
Ham On Rye by Charles Bukowski
A History of Binary and Other Nondecimal Numeration by Glaser
Hyperbolic Geometry by James W. Anderson
And the all-powerful poetry of Emily Dickinson!
Magazines:
Music:
Lines I Highlighted
The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change.
Your Turn
If you met an alien, what would you show them to convince them that humanity was worth saving?
May your life be as full as your bookshelf and as long as your TBR list.
Happy Reading!
Spill the tea or put it on your grocery list.
“Juicy Gossip” lined, 120-page, paperback journal.
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