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Saturday, 5 December 2015

The Humans - Matt Haig


Title: The Humans
Author: Matt Haig
Publisher: Thorndike Press, 2013
Publishing Date: July 2nd 2013
Available Editions: Paperback, Hardback, EBook, Audio


Book Synopsis:
After an "incident" one wet Friday night where he is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge. Professor Andrew Martin is not quite feeling himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confuse him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels los amongst a crazy alien species that hates everyone on the plant. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he's a dog.

Who is he really? And what could make someone change their mind about the human race.

Review:
A friend of mine called Amy had gotten this book a while before me, she expressed her opinion on it and I couldn't help but be intrigued in her experience with the book so when I next orders books offline, The Humans was one of them and was the first books to arrive from my order. It sat on my shelf for a little while and then it was finally time to read it and I was extremely excited.

Andrew Martin is a maths professor at Cambridge University and somehow he unlocks the answer to the Riemann Hypothesis, a mathematical puzzle that concerns prime numbers and may unlock answers to some of humanity's biggest questions and could guarantee a great improvement of technology for humans.

Having learned of the breakthrough from the other side of the universe, Vonnadorians (a more intellectually advanced race) decided that humans are too destructive to let them keep the knowledge of the discovery.

A single Vonnadorian is sent to earth to kill any humans that may have discovered the information about the discovery and finds itself in the body Andrew Martins (who is now dead having his body being taken over by an alien), trying to discover if his family or anyone else knows anything about the discovery of the solution to the Riemann hypothesis.

The Vonnadorian shows us a distorted vision of how perfection looks and is able to store a large amount of theoretical knowledge but finds it harder to understand the human unreasoned and illogical norms. To understand the Humans he must become one.

“If getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.”

As a work of fiction, it leaves a message of viewpoint, and what morals are considered “right” or even logical. Although we see ourselves as individuals and see our morals as personal, the book shows us that as a single species that has a fixed definition of what it means to be human, at the beginning. Yet it later reveals our diversity and individuality. It gives us a new perspective of how small we are in comparison to the entire universe. Nevertheless it allows us to see what a big impact we have on each other and potential outer sources.

I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, people would often look at me funny as I read it on the bus but who cares? I have to recommend this book to literally anyone, like I don't even have any specific person to recommend it to, its suitable for anyone no matter what genre they usually read. I have to give it 5/5 without any doubt.





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