Beautiful book. Andrew is already dead but no one knows except for the extra terrestrial that has taken over his body. As Andrew he is assigned with the task of destroying everything about the mathematical discovery Andrew has made. Soon the new Andrew is taken in with humanity and all its quirks. ( )

I really like the television series Resident Alien, and when I searched for books like the show, this is the one that was listed as the best match. Everything I read said it was humorous, but it's not. I ended up liking it, but it made me sad and had I know what it was really like, I probably would have never read it. ( )

Given how well-reviewed ‘The Humans’ is, combined with the fact that it’s set in Cambridge, I expected to love it. In the end, I only quite liked it. Although it is very nicely written and contains some excellent turns of phrase, I didn’t find as profound and touching as I think it was intended to be. In the novel, an alien pretends to be a Cambridge mathematician (from Fitzwilliam College, the brick one by Huntingdon Road) in order to erase evidence of his solution to the Riemann hypothesis. The unnamed alien finds this harder than expected when he starts to identify with and care about the humans he encounters. Whilst it wasn’t quite depicted this simply, the overall message seemed to be that loving someone in a heterosexual monogamous romantic relationship is what makes you human. Since most other popular culture stuffs this idea down everyone’s throat, I am frankly tired of it. I was more invested in the relationship between our narrator and Newton, the dog. The book still deserves three stars, though, because I enjoyed the attempts to reconcile mundane daily routines with terrifying abstractions. ( )

Book 194.
The Humans.
Matt Haig.
Loaned to me by Lesley Baldwin . Thoroughly enjoyed this. It isn't one I might have automatically been drawn to as it's kind of science fiction (with maths thrown in) mixed with (at first) humour (where you laugh out loud) which then slowly turns to sadness so that by the end I was crying. Apparently the author at the age of 24 had wanted to end his life and he wrote about this period of his life in "Reasons to stay alive" which will be added to my "to read list".
Recommend to Rebecca Lumb Dawn Rogers Janet Elizabeth Conway Stewart Green Lisa Rose Wright Julie Mary Simons plus I am going to tell Peter to read it. Thanks Lesley. 9.5/10
Dan Carpenter
Stephen Racz ( )

Set in Cambridge, England, this is a story about a professor whose dead body is reanimated by an alien who has arrived to attempt Earth from advancing too quickly for our own good. ( )