Name: Life Hacks for a Little Alien
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)
Author: Alice Franklin

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Summary

Book Summary

For readers of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Remarkably Bright Creatures, this "unique, engaging, and insightful" (Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words) debut novel about one little girl's obsession with a mysterious manuscript is a love letter to language—how it shapes the world for each of us and connects us all in the end.

"Climb up here, Little Alien. Sit next to me. I will tell you about life on this planet. I will tell you how it goes."

Before she thinks of herself as Little Alien, our narrator is only a lonely little girl living in southeast England, who doesn't understand the world the way other children seem to. So when a late-night TV special introduces her to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript—an ancient tome written in an indecipherable language—Little Alien experiences something she hasn't before: hope. Could there be others like her, who also feel like they're from another planet?

Convinced the Voynich Manuscript holds the answers she needs, Little Alien turns to the place she feels at peace: the library. What she learns there sets Little Alien and her best (and only) friend Bobby on a course toward finding this strange book. Where it leads them will change everything.

Narrated by an unexpected guide who has arrived to offer Little Alien the advice she'll need to find her way, Life Hacks for a Little Alien explores a less-usual experience of the world with heartbreaking empathy. Inviting us into the head of a child who doesn't read her surroundings the way we might assume, Alice Franklin will have readers swinging from stitches to tears on the uneven path to finding a life that fits, even when you yourself do not.

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Media Reviews

"Franklin's fresh debut, inspired by her experience with autism, centers on an unnamed girl in southeast England known as Little Alien ... Franklin delightfully renders her neurodivergent protagonist's attempt to make sense of what's 'normal' and to understand how language works. This has plenty of heart." —Publishers Weekly

"A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War." —Kirkus Reviews

"This is one of those rare books that is so brilliant, so original and lovely and funny, that it reminds you of the point of reading, and renews your faith in fiction. I adored it. I'm going to be recommending it to everyone I know, friends and enemies alike (even bad people should have good things). I laughed frequently while reading it, and was moved, and interested, and changed." ―Rebecca Wait, author of I'm Sorry You Feel That Way

"Alice Franklin is a new writer that should be on every 'Books of 2025' list. Reading Life Hacks for A Little Alien, I was blown away by its stunningly original approach to the literary form. It's one of those books which left me closing the final page and wishing I could read it afresh again for the first time. Beautiful, moving, and life-affirming, Alice Franklin's prose is a triumph to read. Totally addictive and brilliant. The prose flows like Paul Murray's The Bee Sting via Ruth Ozeki's The Book of Form and Emptiness, which is to say: Life Hacks for A Little Alien is sure to find its place as one of the best loved works of fiction." ―Aimee Walsh, author of Exile

"I finished Life Hacks for a Little Alien last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it to be witty, bold, heart-warming and entirely delicious. I devoured it. I also found Little Alien to be one of the most memorable and charming characters I've ever come across." ―Jyoti Patel, bestselling author of The Things That We Lost

This information about Life Hacks for a Little Alien was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

funny, quirky and insightful
Life Hacks for a Little Alien is the first novel by British author, Alice Franklin. She has been raised by loving parents, but doesn’t quite fit in. Her late speech and strange little things she does have her mum worried. Between misunderstandings, and mischief by her classmates, she has spent more of her younger years being home schooled than in a classroom, a little unfortunate as her mum is, mentally, not the most stable. At school, when she does attend, teachers take her reticence for stupidity.

Reading others is a challenge and she’s “grateful for how explicitly Mike and Mark (a set of simple books) express their feelings. You would like it if everyone were like this. If you always knew when your dad was tetchy, you’d know to avoid him so he doesn’t snap at you. If you always knew when your mum was worried, you’d know when you needed to soothe her. And if you knew someone was lonely – maybe one of these human children that you are surrounded by every weekday – then you’d approach them and begin the long and tiresome process of befriending them. You could hang out with them every day if need be. You’d be their best friend, their constant companion, their sidekick, their pal.”

Not until she turns twelve, when insomnia has her viewing a late-night documentary about a mysterious untranslated document, does she begin to understand: “Until now, you didn’t realise that aliens existed, at least not for real. Until now, you didn’t realise they had their own language. To you, it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense because sometimes you feel like your language isn’t your language. Other people say things and you don’t know what they mean. Other people do things and you don’t know what they mean either. There is a disconnect, something profoundly wrong. You feel this strongly, feel it in your bones.”

The Voynich Manuscript, as it is called, has her fascinated. The librarians at the town library are very helpful; she voraciously devours anything they can find for her; she dreams of being able to decipher it, certain it will provide the answers she seeks about life, a guide to life on earth for this little alien.

She accidentally(?) reconnects with former classmate, Bobby, onto whose pink shoes she threw up when she first encountered him. He has not only stood up for her previously, but now seems so taken by her interest in the Voynich Manuscript, he enthusiastically conducts his own research and encourages into a (perhaps ill-prepared) expedition that has a number of consequences, not all of them bad…

Franklin adopts a second person narrative, with an unnamed linguist relating significant events in our little alien’s life, and appends each chapter with a decidedly tongue-in-cheek Further Reading list, as well as providing the linguist’s helpful footnotes. The reader might need to don their disbelief suspenders for certain aspects of the story (the school, the teachers, the entry to the University library, the mental institution, the police…) but accepting them as entertaining will allow full enjoyment of this funny, quirky and insightful tale.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Quercus/riverrun

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Author Information

Biography

Alice Franklin

Alice Franklin lives and works in London. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Life Hacks for a Little Alien is her debut novel.

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