Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Book Review: The Humans by Matt Haig

The Humans by Matt Haig takes a fun, irreverent look at the human species, our appearances and way of life.  The novel revolves around the narration of an alien species called the Vonnadorians, in the form of a report to his superiors.

The author did not tell the readers what the alien looked like, but from the alien's horrified reporting of humans, one can allude that Vonnadorians most likely resemble a round ball with huge eyes. "Their faces alone contain all manner of curiosities. A primitive external auditory organs known as ears, tiny eyes and unfathomably pointless eyebrows." It went on to describe the "primitivenesss" of having external limbs, and the unfathomableness of the law requiring the human species to wear odd things called clothes.

This description of humans resonated with me as I had, between 2008 and 2010, written another blog from the perspective of my cats. I had wondered what my cats thought of us changing our clothes all the time, our activities, our going-in and going-out of the house and coming home with bags of groceries or new household items. So, from my cats' point of view, we were constantly changing our skins, we sometimes hanged our skins on coat hooks, put them into a square looking contraption that washed and tumbled-dried our skins and we went out to hunt for food at fixed hours daily, but were only successful at weekends.

But I digressed. Back to the novel, the nameless alien was placed on earth to take the place of a brilliant mathematical professor, Andrew Martin. It was hinted that the said professor was abducted and killed by the Vonnadorians for a breakthrough mathematical discovery that would threaten the universe.

The narrator alien's job was to find out who Andrew Martin had revealed the mathematical evidence to, assassinate those who knew, and destroy the evidence.

 

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Book Review: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides


 The Silent Patient opened with Alicia Berenson's diary. It began with "I don't know why I'm writing this. That's not true. Maybe I do know and just don't want to admit it to myself." And she went on to write about how much she loved her husband Gabriel so much so that she.....here she stopped and wrote "No I won't write about that. This is going to be a joyful record of ideas and images. No crazy thoughts allowed." 

With that, I was reeled in hook, line and sinker. With such an introduction, you knew there were going to be layers in the story, with plot twists.

At thirty-three years old, Alicia shot her husband five times when he came home one night after work and then went completey silent while her therapist, obssessed at finding out her motive, continued to work on her.

The story is told from the therapist's point of view and the silent Alicia's diary. At a certain point in the story, I started to wonder if one of the narration is reliable. Did Alicia kill her husband or did someone else do it? If so, why did she keep silent? Who was she protecting? Or who was she afraid of? Those were my questions as I kept reading. 

The answer wasn't what I expected, but it explained everything neatly. A well-written story, it kept me glued to the end.