The Humans by Matt Haig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This novel takes the fish-out-of-water concept to a whole new level. An unnamed alien on assignment inhabits the body of a Cambridge mathematician to save the universe from the possibility that humans will gain access to powerful knowledge that will threaten the peaceful stability of said universe. That sentence is dry. This novel is not. A sly sense of humor inhabits our narrator’s observations, which are essentially notes for the entities back on its home planet. Along the way we get to see ourselves from the outside in, and our narrator also slowly modifies some of his initial judgments. In fact, nearly all of them.
My complaints are petty. 1) the ostensible purpose for this novel dissolves halfway through, and then The Humans becomes just a regular novel. 2) in becoming a regular novel, one feels the tug on the heartstrings a bit much. But all in all, still very enjoyable, and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny (it’s true).