Audiobook Review: The Humans by Matt Haig
The Humans
Author: Matt Haig
Narrator: Mark Meadows
Published: May 9, 2013
Audiobook: 8 hours 11 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: May 6-11, 2025
Jessica’s Rating: 3.5 stars
Book Description:
When an extraterrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a leading mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor wants to complete his task and return home to his planet and a utopian society of immortality and infinite knowledge.
He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, and the wars they witness on the news, and is totally baffled by concepts such as love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this weird species than he has been led to believe. He drinks wine, reads Emily Dickinson, listens to Talking Heads, and begins to bond with the family he lives with, in disguise. In picking up the pieces of the professor’s shattered personal life, the narrator sees hope and redemption in the humans’ imperfections and begins to question the very mission that brought him there–a mission that involves not only thwarting human progress…but murder.
Jessica’s Review:
This was a book club read for May. Overall, I did enjoy it; I just had some issues with the narrator. An unnamed alien takes over the form of Math professor Andrew Martin because he (Andrew Martin) made a math discovery which could cause the human race to gain advantages in their development as a species. This could be a detriment to them, so the unnamed narrator is sent to destroy all evidence of the discovery…. and more.
This is the basic synopsis of the story but the journey this unnamed narrator goes on is the entire story. His first thoughts of humans are that they are ugly (especially their noses)! I wondered why a nose was on the cover of the book. And then you read it and know! Humans are also greedy, selfish, and worse!
I was entertained with our unnamed narrator and his discovery of the necessity of clothing for humans at the beginning of his journey. Along with the after-effects of that throughout the novel. The reader sees the ‘new’ Andrew Martin with his family and in a way the ‘new’ Andrew Martin becomes human: He begins to experience empathy, love, understanding and more. But this ‘new’ Andrew Martin also makes mistakes as we humans do. He then has a conundrum of sorts: Complete his mission and return to his home planet or stay in human form.
This book was entertaining and I did giggle quite a bit. I did have some issues with the narrator; he did not totally work for me. His narration was a bit flat and toneless, which made it harder for me to listen to. I did get used to it, but it didn’t really work for me. This could also be the narrator’s interpretation and presentation of the alien character. The narration did cause me to rate this novel 3.5 stars.
It is a good book, but I would say read it over listening to the narration.