(courtesy Matt Haig)
It’s a rare and wonderful thing to pick up a book, read the back blurb and decide to get it because it sounds like a deliciously appealing mix of quirky and thoughtful, and then to find that it not only deliver on the promise of its premise but it goes way beyond, forging an intriguing idea into something beautifully and profoundly human.
Even better when it somehow manages to dance along on wave of prose so light and buoyant and often funny that you feel caught in the sort of heart-pleasing confection that makes reality feel just that little bit more bearable before plunging you deep into the sort of soul-searing narrative pitches for which therapy is inadequate and you must spend time recovering somewhere, pondering what it is to be you and what makes a home truly a home.
That’s a lot to put into any story and yet somehow Matt Haig manages it with aplomb with The Humans, a book plucked off the backlist of a bookstore and which turns out to be quite the best random purchase ever.
Proving once again that books don’t have anything approaching a shelf life and are in their prime when you need them to be, The Humans, first published in 2013, is a joy to read because it dances with writerly skill and human empathy with a feisty dash of humour delivered just-so, between the quirky and the meaningful, always feeling it belongs in each camp and never once minimising one to maximise the other.
In the meantime I kept walking, got past the sign, and saw an illuminated but disconcertingly unmoving building by the side of the road.
I will go to it, I told myself. I will go to it and find some answers.
It’s almost impossible to review fully without giving away some major plots nuggets but here goes anyway, because this is the kind of book that actually stays with you long after the last page is dispensed with.
That’s not something you can say of many books, especially if you read a lot and even if you like many of the books you read, because one story supplants another all too quickly, and while you remember previous works with a warm inner glow, having them stay vivid and alive to you can be a challenge.
That’s not even a worry with The Humans which begins with Professor Andrew Martin, esteemed if irascible mathematician, who is found wandering the streets of Cambridge in a most unprofessorial state of undress.
Not only is he naked, unaware of why that’s a bad thing, though he suspects it is because everyone is reacting to him as if its very much a case of clothes good, no clothes bad, but he suddenly feels unmoored from his reality, repulsed by wife and son, not really a fan of eating and quite uncomfortable with what it means to be human.
Cut off from his day-to-day reality where is fantastically close to solving a legendary maths puzzle at great cost to his marriage and friendships, Martin is suddenly less a revered if not wholly liked academic and more a very grounded human who’s not quite sure which way is existentially up anymore.
(courtesy The Apex)
Where The Humans goes from here must remain a carefully guarded secret because it’s wondrously effecting indeed, but suffice to say that if you have ever wondered why you are the way you are, what it means to be you and you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit your own life anymore, this novel will really speak to you.
If it sounds like some weighty philosophical tome sinking between the waves of ponderous thinking and feeling, rest assured that you will be swept along on a wave of vibrantly eccentric but insightful humour, some real moments of existential pain that vividly evoke how easy it is to feel great loss and a longing for great gain all in the one impossible moment, and a quirky sense that here is life as it is, seen through the eyes of someone who suddenly goes from insider to outsider on his own life and who has to figure out how it all goes together.
Buoyed by a charming sweetness that sits happily alongside some quite raw emotions, The Humans somehow manages to be both confronting and reassuring, answering some pretty big questions while feeling emotionally intimate and like the sort of hug you need when the world suddenly doesn’t make sense anymore.
Through Martin and his ride down into the terrifying wonderland of his suddenly repulsive and confounding humanity, we get a beautiful insight into the messy contrariness of what it means to be human, and how we somehow manage to extract good and beautiful things out of what is by any measure a chaotically shambolic way of living.
Afterwards, I held her and she held me and I gently kissed her forehead as the wind beat against the window.
She fell asleep.
I watched her, in the dark. I wanted to protect her and keep her safe. Then I got out of bed.
I had something to do.
Haig has never been shy about his experiences with mental health issues and suicidal ideation, and if you’ve spent anytime with his social media outpourings, you’ll appreciate that he is a man who is very glad to be alive and thrilled to be human even if it comes with a measure of inescapable pain and suffering.
The thing is that even as The Humans celebrates how wonderful and lovely it is to be human, with music, art, food, dogs and gorgeous companions as our constants, it knows that this walk from A to B, however long it might be, is never an easy one and that it comes with as much pain and discombobulation as it is does soul-pleasing moments of ecstasy and joy.
This grounded perspective informs The Humans with a sage appreciation of what it really means to be alive.
It holds high all the things that makes us gloriously, wondrously human, and defends them to the hilt in ways lyrical and brutally honest, but it also admits that for all the wondrousness, that there are more than few sharp metaphorical nails lurking beneath the candy floss and froth.
In other words, with the good come the bad and while Martin has to work out anew in ways that will enthrall and intrigue you, whether the former is worth enduring the latter, there’s no doubt by the time you reach the end The Humans – rather sadly as it turns out, because this is one book that really owns and enriches your soul – that you will be glad to be alive, even with the spiky bits in your grasp, and in a way that feels real and honest, all thanks to a writer who has seen both sides of the coin of being alive, and knows without a doubt, which side he is happy to reside on for as long as this messy business called life will have him.