![]() ![]() ![]() Albatrosses are those rare humans who, once through puberty, age only 1 year for every 15 years of normal human life. How to Stop Time imagines a world in which there are humans of two types, referred to by a few in the know as albatrosses and mayflies. ![]() Because that’s the thing about all of his books: while their tone is often light, whimsical and endearing, they are usually taking life’s biggest questions and challenges head on, using a clever narrative to do it. While it’s very recognizably a Haig novel, I think that it’s perhaps his most thought-provoking yet. Last week, I finished How to Stop Time (2018). Reasons to Stay Alive is so Matt Haig, in the sense that it is bare-your-heart honest, tender, compassionate and full of humanity, laced with humour, and centred on love as the sine qua non for a life of joy and meaning (there are actually 13 novels to Haig’s credit-he also writes for children-and has published six works of non-fiction). Next for me came Reasons to Stay Alive (2016), a wonderful, brave work of non-fiction that takes the reader into the darkness of anxiety-depression in which Haig found himself between the ages of 24 and 32-a very long time. The novel was The Humans, which I had pulled off the shelf at Chapters because I loved its cover art and had a gut feeling that I had found a gem. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |