The Humans

Product Information

In his newest book The Radleys (2010) , an intelligently conceived tale of a family of vampires attempting to live incognito in suburbia, Haig further explores the consequences of suppression in the context of the nuclear family. Teenagers Rowan and Clara are unaware of their heritage until a bloody killing forces the family to take action. While the rotating viewpoint tends to diminish reader engagement, plotting remains tight and Haig’s ideas – such as ‘An Abstainer’s Glossary’ which explains vampire terms – fresh. Matt Haig is an author and journalist who has sold more than a million books in the UK. He’s passionate about mental health and his books often reflect that. His multi-award winning popular first novel for children, Shadow Forest, was published in 2007 and its sequel, The Runaway Troll, in 2009. Since then he has written To Be A Cat (2013); Echo Boy (2014) and A Boy Called Christmas (2015) with illustrations by Chris Mould. I really admire Matt Haig for being able to become so distant towards our species and writing it from the POV of an alien ( Andrew Martin from The Humans).

Matt Haig - Wikipedia Matt Haig - Wikipedia

A Boy Called Christmas has been made into a film that will be released this year – just before Christmas, naturally – while a film of his 2017 novel How to Stop Time is being developed by Benedict Cumberbatch’s production company. When you’re feeling a bit rough and ropey, and your mind is distracted, you can’t absorb the most highbrow text. You’re not there reading Freud and Jung and Lacan. A pop song can save your life. An episode of Friends can change your life. But when it’s in the world of books, it becomes this snobfest. I’m resistant to that. I also like confusing people, so I’ll do my big, corny, sentimental, puppy-dog line and then I’ll write a chapter about Aristotle.” The Comfort Book is a collection of consolations learned in hard times and suggestions for making the bad days better. Drawing on maxims, memoir and the inspirational lives of others, these meditations offer new ways of seeing ourselves and the world. As a novelist, you are absolved from responsibility and you’re not very good at taking it on. There was a little moment when I would have pressed a button not to have written it. Certainly not now, because I’ve come to terms with it, but there was a time when it was a bit too much.” Founder of Christianity. Misunderstood socialist-magician who meant well,and had a flair for motivational speaking.The book is hilarious but also sad. I'm really wondering if that's what an alien would see, learn and comprehend about us and our planet?

Humans: An A-Z - Matt Haig Humans: An A-Z - Matt Haig

IMO, Humans: An A to Z is a great (though a bit quirky) opportunity to look at ourselves from a healthy distance and really think over some of our emotions, behaviours, obsessions and decisions.

I don’t mind saying things that might be annoying if I believe in them,” he says. “I went so long being nervous and silent and timid – feelings that nearly killed me – that I’ve now gone to the other extreme, where I’ll say the thing that possibly shouldn’t be said.” The human class system used to be easy to understand. A human was working class if he had to work in a factory,middle class if he didn't have to work in a factory and upper class if he didn't have to work at all. Since nowadays no one except robots and people from Indonesia work in factories,a new system has developed based around various intricate things such as what humans like to see at the theatre, where they go on holiday,the kind of flooring they have in their kitchen and their opinion on Chardonnay wine. Aged 24, Matt Haig’s world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again. It's harder and harder to get to that place of creative freedom where you think: 'If I was just starting out now and this was the first thing I'd ever put out, what would it be?' Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old history teacher, but he’s been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to Jazz-Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen it all. As long as he keeps changing his identity, he can stay one step ahead of his past – and stay alive. The only thing he must not do is fall in love.

Matt Haig: ‘I have never written a book that will be more Matt Haig: ‘I have never written a book that will be more

He studied at Hull University and Leeds University and currently lives in York. After running his own internet marketing company and working for a nightclub in Spain, he became a full-time writer. He writes for various national newspapers, including The Guardian and The Independent. Haig is one of the most inspirational popular writers on mental health of our age and, in his latest novel, he has taken a clever, engaging concept and created a heart-warming story that offers wisdom in the same deceptively simple way as Mitch Albom's best tales" Philip Noble is an eleven-year-old in crisis. His pub landlord father has died in a road accident, and his mother is succumbing to the greasy charms of her dead husband’s brother, Uncle Alan. The remaining certainties of Philip’s life crumble away when his father’s ghost appears in the pub and declares Uncle Alan murdered him. Terence Cave, owner of Cave Antiques, has already experienced the tragedies of his mother’s suicide and his wife’s murder when his teenage son, Reuben, is killed in a grotesque accident. His remaining child, Bryony, has always been the family’s golden girl and Terence comes to realise that his one duty in life is to protect her from the world’s malign forces, whatever that may take.Haig’s second novel The Dead Fathers Club (2006) is a father-son story that, according to the author, ‘migrated slowly towards Hamlet’. The narrator is 11-year-old Philip Noble, whose dead publican father reappears as a ghost to demand that Philip avenge his murder by Uncle Alan, the new landlord of The Castle and would-be seducer of Philip’s mother. The novel ‘pushes and pulls at Shakespeare's play in such a way that only half the fun is … in spotting the parallels’ (Gerard Woodward, The Guardian, 1 July 2006 ). ‘The story is so surprising and strange that it vaults into a realm all of its own’ while the child’s perspective ‘brings out the absurd comedy of Shakespeare's tragedy’ and allows the author to indulge his ‘innocently acute eye for detail and … delightfully weird imagination’. There’s one thing every troll child dreads more than anything – and that’s the Betterer, the evil troll in Shadow Forest who loves to punish his fellow trolls for their grubby and stupid habits in lots of horrible ways.