Title: Life Hacks for a Little Alien
Author: Alice Franklin
Publication Date: February 11, 2025
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Format Read: Kindle e-book
Genre: Literary Fiction
Life Hacks for a Little Alien is one of those books that is difficult to explain without flattening what makes it special. It is funny, painful, strange, tender, and deeply compassionate, all at once. I finished it feeling as though I had been allowed inside a very particular way of seeing the world, one that is often misunderstood by the people around it.
The story follows a lonely, undiagnosed neurodivergent girl who feels profoundly out of step with the people and rules of her world. After a late-night TV program introduces her to the mysterious, undeciphered Voynich Manuscript, she becomes convinced it may hold answers for someone who has always felt as though she comes from another planet. With her only friend, Bobby, she sets out to find it, while an older, unexpected narrator guides her through childhood’s bewildering social codes, painful misunderstandings, and the slow discovery that there may be a place for her after all.
Franklin’s intimate, distinctive, deceptively simple second-person narration is the foundation of the story’s empathy. The constant “you” places readers directly inside Little Alien’s intensely observant, literal, and often dryly funny perspective. Yes, even if you are an eighty-five-year-old man. As the mother of a daughter on the spectrum, I also found myself recognizing pieces of her in Little Alien’s thought processes, which made the story hit even closer to home for me. Being privy to her thought processes may make readers see neurodivergent people in a whole new light. Little Alien is the sun of the story, around which the other complex characters orbit.
Beneath its charming coming-of-age adventure, the novel explores neurodivergence, loneliness, friendship, language, memory, and the ache of being misunderstood. It is ultimately a compassionate story about learning to translate an overwhelming world without losing the self that sees it differently.
It is not often that I read something that leaves me nearly speechless when I sit down to write the review, but Life Hacks for a Little Alien most certainly accomplished that. I agree with the blurb: this is an excellent choice for fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. It would also be a good fit for readers of Dan Mooney’s Me, Myself and Them.
Nerd Rating: 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓— funny, tender, and unforgettable
Click here to learn more about Life Hacks for a Little Alien and Alice Franklin.
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Great review! I’m also neurodivergent and didn’t get diagnosed until later in life, so this was super relatable, thank you for sharing!
Thank you so much for sharing that. I’m glad my review resonated with you. Franklin captured that feeling of trying to understand the rules everyone else seems to know so beautifully.