The Humans: Matt Haig

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The movie rights have gone to Tanya Seghatchian (Harry Potter, My Summer of Love producer) at Apocalypto and I’m currently writing the screenplay. The Humans is tremendous; a kind of Curious Incident meets The Man Who Fell to Earth. It's funny, touching and written in a highly appealing voice

New technology, on Earth, just means something you will laugh at in five years. Value the stuff you won’t laugh at in five years. Like love. Or a good poem. Or a song. Or the sky.A wonderfully funny, gripping and inventive novel. Like Kurt Vonnegut and Audrey Niffenegger, Haig uses the tropes of science fiction to explore and satirise concepts of free will, love, marriage, logic, immortality and mercy with elegance and poignancy. The Times

The way that the narrator chooses to live his life as a human says a lot about what he values about humanity. What lessons do you take from his attitude toward his finite amount of time on Earth? Don’t worry about being angry. Worry when being angry becomes impossible. Because then you have been consumed. Pulley, Natasha (27 August 2020). "The Midnight Library by Matt Haig review – a celebration of life's possibilities". The Guardian . Retrieved 12 May 2021.

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In his life as a human, one of the first bonds the narrator makes will prove to be one of the strongest—with the dog Newton. How does his relationship with Newton ease him into human society? What does that say about humans’ relationships to animals? I really don’t think that there was anything that I didn’t love about this, and I think I will definitely read it or listen to it again at some point in the future. With Andrew not caring for his family, their son, Gulliver, was left broken. He was bullied and people expected more from him because his father was a genius. And so, Gulliver was depressed and hated the world. One of the novel’s final chapters is entitled “Advice for a Human” and takes the form of a list the narrator writes for Gulliver. What advice would you give Gulliver? Write down ten to fifteen ideas to share with your group. Are the things you listed things you do in your own life or things you aspire to? How similar or dissimilar to “Advice for a Human” are your choices?

While the alien was supposed to be a superior being, he went from seeing humans as we see birds or squirrels to seeing the better parts of humans - capacity to love and care for each other. His description of the human and his appalling concern with the nose was very funny. His confusion over having to be clothed likewise. The Humans is a laugh-and-cry book. Troubling, thrilling, puzzling, believable and impossible. Matt Haig uses words like a tin-opener. We are the tin" (JEANETTE WINTERSON) Haig displays a wise understanding of the human condition and exploits to the hilt the vantage point that he has given his narrator. Many anthropological, sociological and evolutionary texts often invite the reader to view the world as if it is being viewed from an alien sociologist/scientist’s perspective. Haig converts that into a novel length observation about the humans, and adds a twist: instead of observing only from a constant alien perspective, he makes the vantage point an ever shifting one - that of a continually evolving perspective that is moving closer and closer to that of the human. Astute, drolly hilarious and occasionally beautiful, full of poignant and painful insight into what it is to be human. Jay Richardson The List The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to hold the hand of someone you cared about and to live inside the present. Past and future were myths. The past was just the present that had died and the future would never exist anyway, because by the time we got to it the future would have turned into the present. The present was all there was.”plot - funny yet thought-provoking (i.e. a dark comedy). I was invested throughout the story, from its hilarious beginning, its riveting middle to its hopeful ending; Throughout the novel, our narrator encounters many different definitions of love. Which of these definitions spoke to you the most? Why? Why is love such a difficult, particularly human, puzzle?