York author Matt Haig’s new novel is a funny and moving outsider’s look at what it is to be human. STEPHEN LEWIS reports

IN HIS last couple of novels, Matt Haig has written about a family of respectable vampires (the father is a GP) who live in a suburb of York; and a little boy who turns into a cat.

His latest book is about creatures much odder than vampires or cats: human beings.

You might think you know everything you need to know about human beings. But trust me, you don’t.

Matt, in his ongoing search to find new things to say about us, imagines an alien somehow transported to Earth and embedded into the body of a Cambridge mathematics professor. From this vantage point, the alien observes with horror and bewilderment the odd behaviour of these primitive, two-legged creatures.

It makes for some gloriously comic observations on human behaviour, with the tone set effortlessly right from the start.

The book takes the form of a report written by the alien for his superiors. And it begins like this: “I know that some of you reading this are convinced humans are a myth, but I am here to state that they do actually exist. For those that don’t know, a human is a real, bipedal lifeform of mid-range intelligence, living a largely deluded existence on a small waterlogged planet in a very lonely corner of the universe…”

It is a great way of putting us in our place. His intention very much was to “look at humans from the outside”, says the 37-year-old author, who lives in York with his wife Andrea and two young children, Lucas and Pearl.

“As a writer, I’m constantly looking for new ways of finding things out about us. And an alien is the ultimate outsider.”

There are some wonderfully funny scenes early in the novel, as the alien struggles to come to terms with his human ‘skin’.

He finds himself standing on a road in the darkness. “I did not know at that time what a road was, but I can now tell you that a road is something that connects points of departure with points of arrival. This is important. On Earth, you see, you can’t just move from one place to another instantaneously.”

The road he’s on is, actually, a motorway – the “most advanced type of road there is, which as with most forms of human advancement essentially meant accidental death was considerably more probable”.

The alien cannot at first understand human language; doesn’t get the concept of ‘paying’ for things (which causes upsets in a Texaco garage) and is baffled by clothes. Then there is the mysterious thing called an English Springer Spaniel – a “category of hairy domestic deity otherwise known as a ‘dog’”.

After a number of comic mishaps – including being hit by a car, and incarcerated in a mental hospital – the alien finds himself trying to live the life of the human he has replaced: Prof Andrew Martin.

At first he finds himself repelled by the wife and child who seem so oddly attached to him. But gradually, as he learns to fit better inside his new skin, he finds his attitudes changing.

There is a plot involving a mathematical discovery made by Prof Martin – a discovery which bodes ill for the human race, and which is why the alien comes to earth in the first place.

But this is, above all, a story about what it means to be a human being – an intelligent, two-legged creature which knows that, one day, it will die – and about the redeeming power of love. And it is, at times, stunningly beautiful.

There is one scene, about half way through, where the alien finds himself, to his amazement, declaring that he loves ‘his’ wife.

“I love you too,” she replies.

“Yes, but it is impossible to love you.”

“Thank you. Precisely what a girl likes to hear.”

“No. I mean, because of where I come from. No one there can love.”

“What? Sheffield? It’s not that bad.”

Then she takes his head in her hands “as if it were another delicate thing she wanted to preserve,” the alien narrates. “She knew one day her husband would die and yet she still dared to love him. That was an amazing thing.”

And this is an amazing book.

• The Humans, by Matt Haig, was published by Canongate this week, priced £12.99.

• Matt Haig has already been commissioned to write a screenplay for a film based on the book.