Tag mental health

Matt Haig: Does Extra Time Bring Happiness?

Reg Spittle 2 Comments

Do you ever wish you could slow your body clock? What if you would age just a year for every two years? Would it be even better if you would age just a year for every 15 years? Extra time also comes with a bonus: You would be immune from human illnesses.

Ready to sign up?

Wait a minute. How long before people around you proclaim, “You look so young! How do you do it?” After a few more years, what if people, fearing that you are not normal, pull away from you, even suspect that you are evil personified? Your parents, siblings, wife, children, grow old and die while you age just a few years.

You might enjoy being 18 for 15 years, but would you feel as good about being in your 80s for 150 years? What would happen if you told people the truth?

In Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, Tom Hazard is a 41-year-old high school history teacher in England whose real life has spanned 439 years. He ages normally until he is 13, when it takes 15 years for him to age to 14. Born in 1581, he works with Shakespeare and sails with Captain Cook.

As much as he is enthralled with technological advances and opportunities to know famous historical figures, Tom harbors regrets and worries about his future, keeping him from enjoying the present most of the time.

Tom tells his story through travels to his past. He knows there are others like him, and they are protected by the Albatross Society, whose leader’s most important rule is to never fall in love. Tom had a wife and daughter many years before, but, now, he falls for a high school French teacher. He must decide whether to push her away or to let go of the restrictions, tell her his secrets, and live in the present. Have four centuries been enough time for him to learn how to be happy?

Haig has been forthcoming about his own mental health struggles. Mental health themes come through in this and two other of his novels I have read, Midnight Library, and The Humans. I recommend all three thought-provoking books.

Matt Haig’s literary fame was boosted when actor/producer Bernard Cumberbatch purchased the film rights to How to Stop Time. Cumberbatch plans to play the lead.

Matt Haig Pens a Comical, Moving Story About an Alien on Earth

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Is there intelligent life out there? Are we being watched? Do aliens live amongst us?

In The Humans, Matt Haig answers “yes” to these questions in an intriguing story that explores the best and worst parts of human nature.

The story begins when an alien is sent to Earth to kill Cambridge University mathematics professor Andrew Martin and erase all evidence of his recent discovery, which threatens the Universe. He quickly kills the mathematician, takes his place in Martin’s human form, then moves into his home to carry out the killings of Martin’s wife and 15-year-old son.

His task is not as simple as it seems. His naiveté about proper human behavior, like wearing clothes, leads to hysterical situations in this dark comedy. He has been taught that humans are fallible, not that smart, and lack the powers his kind have back on his planet. And they don’t live forever. While bumbling through his new life, Martin finds a way into the heart of his “son” Gulliver, who had been alienated from his selfish and detached real dad.

The Humans is as moving as it is playful and, in the end, I was drawn to its sentimentality and uplifting theme.

In a note at the end of book, Haig explains that he came up with the story idea in 2000 while in the grips of a panic disorder. Although he wrote other books in the meantime, The Humans is a story he ultimately wanted to tell so he could relate the “weird and often frightening beauty of being human.”

Matt Haig has rocketed to literary success through his children’s books, a memoir (Reasons to Stay Alive), and other novels. His latest novel, How to Stop Time, is being made into a motion picture by actor/producer Benedict Cumberbatch. I will soon post my review of that book.

The Humans is one of the best books I have read in 2023.