The Humans

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The real Andrew Martin was selfish, singularly focused on fame, emotionally closed off, vain, and unfaithful. Haig displays a wise understanding of the human condition and exploits to the hilt the vantage point that he has given his narrator. The tonal language in the song of a humpback whale displays more complexity than the entire works of Shakespeare.

I would have liked an entire book of this: just a doofy alien in human form walking around the modern world trying—and failing—to make sense of it. If you can’t feel anything towards life, let this story get that heart in your chest beating to life again. My main problems with this book come down to the suspension of disbelief and the constant attempts at being witty and quirky.

Matt Haig is a clever author to have written it, and I loved how he - together with his multiple observations on the human race - was able to provide us with some truths on life and how we live it that you don’t often think about in everyday life.

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. How many times have we all wondered, "What would an alien think if they came to Earth and experienced this?it should more accurately have been titled The War and Money Show” The alien showed how ridiculous we can be and how we needlessly torture ourselves. These initial attempts to fit into human society may not have been completely successful, but they improve a little, thanks not only to his superior Vonnadorian intelligence but also to the fact that the late Professor Martin was evidently the kind of mathematical genius who could quite conceivably have had a breakdown that would leave him running around Corpus Christi college in the nude. At first glance no alien race would be able to resist the temptation to exterminate a dangerous, almost rabid, species like ours.