Making a better human

I'm thinking about how life is so miraculous, none of it really deserves the title "reality."

Matt Haig, The Humans

In The Body Snatchers, later turned into at least three movies, Jack Finney gave us the frightening idea that aliens from space might be able to pass as human beings. Decades later Matt Haig imagines an alien from a distant galaxy not just turning into a human being, but becoming a better human being than the one he replaced. This time, somehow, it seems reassuring.

The Humans (2013) becomes, in turn, a comic novel, a sci-fi horror story, a domestic drama, a thriller and a love story, while always remaining a fascinating commentary on what it means to be human. To finish reading it is to be inspired to start it over again.

The alien narrator has been sent by an advanced civilization on the planet Vonnadoria light years away to replace a British mathematician who has just solved a problem that could significantly advance Earth technology to a dangerous degree. His mission is to destroy all traces of the formula, including killing anyone Andrew Martin might have told about it, such as his wife and teenage son.

At first the new Andrew Martin looks like the old one but knows nothing about actually being human. He appears naked, and it takes him a few chapters to realize human beings are expected to be clothed in public and that spitting is not considered proper social behavior. He finds humans incredibly ugly and their food repulsive, at least until he discovers peanut butter.

He also finds that virtually everyone, including his own wife and son, despises him. The real Martin had been so wrapped up in his work that he had ignored human decency and kindness. His wife, Isobel, only tolerated him. His neglected son, Gulliver, is suicidal. That the new Andrew Martin comes to love his family in a way the old one never did may seem predictable, yet how this happens is what makes Haig's novel so rewarding.

When the powers that be on Vonnadoria realize their agent is not following orders, they send someone else to do the job, meaning that a third Andrew Martin has landed.

Any book club that selects The Humans will have a lot to talk about.