Matt Haig shifts his attention from vampires (The Radleys) to aliens in the sly and touching The Humans. Well, one alien: a Vonnadorian who's come to this "small, waterlogged planet in a very lonely corner of the universe" and taken over the body of a brilliant Cambridge mathematics professor, Andrew Martin. This alien, like Death in Meet Joe Black, is curious about having a human body better to understand, for good and bad, what it means to be human. He's also on a mission: to destroy evidence of the scientific "breakthrough" Martin's just made.
He teleports, naked, to a road at night and is promptly hit by a car. He's taken to a hospital, and after adjusting to the pain, sneaks away. Then, with his Gulliver-like ego in a Swiftian world, he proceeds to observe and critique, complain and mock. Humans have "middling intelligence" and are "prone to violence." Humans read books; Vonnadorians chew and eat them quickly. Human food is horrible; Vonnadorians drink only liquid nitrogen. Everything humans do, Vonnadorians do better.
Gradually, he comes to like some things about Earth--Emily Dickinson, Australian wine, dogs, crunchy peanut butter--and to love others, including Martin's wife and son. Haig invites us to join his alien's journey and observe him become Martin, adjusting and learning that humans aren't as inferior as he originally thought. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher