And yet, I don’t think it’s the plot that makes this book. And then of course all the escalating scenes towards the end of his increasing heroic acts. The night our narrator tries to carry out his orders and kill the son, Gulliver, but instead lets Gulliver beat him up-and then in the bathroom with Isobel as she cleans his wounds and he first feels connected to her. The bar scene watching football with Andrew’s best friend Ari.

So many scenes we could talk about: the one with Daniel’s wife Tabitha crying over her dead husband.

And of course all lead him to redemption. That this was a species of ugliness and violence, beyond redemption.”Īs the story unfolds our narrator grapples with this human duality: great love and beauty and terrible ugliness and violence. I had to keep believing everything that I had been told. “This beauty terrified me, an alien creature appearing out of nowhere. That was the closest representation of space I had ever heard, and I stood there, in the middle of the room, frozen with shock that a human could have made such a beautiful noise.īecause humans prove to be much more complex than his alien “employers” have judged. “The last thing I listened to was a tune called “Clair de Lune” by Debussy.

And yet, ht spends a good amount of time on his own with the wonderful dog Newton, listening to music, reading poetry, trying to make sense of it all. I do wish the alien narrator had a name (it would be easier to talk about him), but he kind of shoots through his new life in the body of Professor Andrew Martin like a pinball-colliding in one way or another with people in Andrew’s life. From the very first scene when our unnamed narrator finds himself on earth as a reluctant, butt naked “40-year old newborn” and gets hit by a car, we know we’re in for a fun ride. First, the story itself-the plot-moves fast. I thought it was inventive, engaging, fun to read-and yet serious and thoughtful. Haig’s The Humans was a lovely first book for the project. I’m setting my own personal deadline to write a post by the end of each month. I really just want to pull a few of my thoughts together while the story is fresh in my mind, and then invite you to share your thoughts.

I’m not going to write a formal review of the books. Is it just me or did we blaze through January ’22 really fast? It seems like I just put out the list of books for my new little Read with Me project, and here we are at the end of the month, first book down.

How to stop time by matt haig summary