(courtesy Hachette Australia)
If you are someone who grew up never quite fitting into the mainstream and feeling distinctly out of place in a world you couldn’t quite figure out, then Alice Franklin’s delightfully thoughtful, Life Hacks for a Little Alien, might be just the read for you.
The story of an un-named girl who is only ever referred to as Little Alien is that unicorn of a book that manages to be whimsically fun and sweet, and quite funny at times, while cutting right to the intense guts of what it means to be human, and how what might seem like a slam dunk simply concept for most people, can confound those who don’t quite fit the mold.
While the cause of Little Alien’s Otherness is never fully explained, and honestly Life Hacks for a Little Alien is all the better for not making it an explicit thing, it soon emerges that through a series of less-than-ideal experiences that she is neurodivergent and likely a person on the autism spectrum.
Thus the sense that she is an alien on a planet with which she is trying to come to terms makes perfect sense and why, despite the best efforts of her largely ineffectual mum and dad – they love her but it’s clear they are not entirely sure what to do with her – she keeps getting a whole host of things wrong.
It’s as if she’s been dumped into a strange and foreign land, with no map and no grasp of the language, and yet she’s supposed to look, act and feel just all the people who have lived in this place all their lives.
Hey, stop crying. Would it help if I told you a story? I have a really great one up my sleeve. It’s all about you — everything you see and everything you do.
Sound good? 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.
Poignant and moving, Life Hacks for a Little Alien is the sort of novel that really opens your eyes.
You may have some sense of what it might be like to be Other but unless you have actually occupied that place of marginality, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like when the world simply doesn’t make sense to you, and when those closest to you don’t have the tools or understanding to help it resolve into something understandable.
If, of course, you are on the margins in some way such as this queer reviewer who appreciates what it is like when you are continually admonished and punished for not being sufficiently one of the crowd, then some of the beautifully articulated Otherness of Life Hacks for a Little Alien will resonate deeply and movingly with you.
You will well know what it is like when the mainstream crowd exclude you or belittle you, when the unspoken language of the majority and the implicit buy-ins that come with that, and what it feels like to be sadly on the outside looking in.
But for many of us who aren’t neurodivergent, the great advantage is that we still possess the ability to understand and make our way through the world; it may not be easy and it may still hurt mightily, but we can still make sense of things enough that life works.
That’s not always, or often the case for Little Alien who has to walk through the world experiencing the Otherness many of us do, but with the added burden that what comes naturally to the neurotypical among us is bewildering and uncertain to those with neurodivergence.
The richness and illuminating joy of novels like Life Hacks for a Little Alien is that they give us that insight but they also make clear, and this is desperately important for those of us in the Otherlands, how rich and alive the lives of people like Little Alien can be when they find their thing.
In her case, it’s the discovery of the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval codex whose language and script are an unenduring mystery, which defies the ability of scholars to decipher and understand it.
It’s not necessarily why Little Alien finds herself compellingly fascinated with the mysterious document, but she feels somewhere deep down that if she can simply figure out the Manuscript means, that she’ll get some answers about herself too.
So, she reads everything she can get her hands on about the Voynich Manuscript, visits the institution in London where it’s on loan from its usual home in America, and in so doing, experiencing a sense of self and a freedom of action which had previously eluded her.
The only person who gets, to some extent anyway, what this means to Little Alien, is her best friend who is also an Other and who appreciates what it means to have something that is yours and yours alone.
‘Babe,’ your mum says. ‘ It’s OK. You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.’
Probably the most wonderful thing about Life Hacks for a Little Alien is the way it doesn’t act as if Little Alien being different is some diminution of her humanity.
The thing with being an Other is that people, often not meaning to be cruel, somehow imply that you not quite the human being that those in a more mainstream place may be.
It observes, quite rightly, that Little Alien isn’t like everyone else – no surprises there; it’s central to the entire narrative – but what it makes clear, and it’s a sweet song of release for who’ve felt diminished for not being one of the crowd, is that this is make them any less of a person.
They are different that is all, and all they need to do is find their place, their path, their home, and their lives will be as rich and fulfilling as anyone else’s.
Having a novel like Life Hacks for a Little Alien bring this central point home at all, but to do it with humour, insightfulness and grounded empathy, is a real gift, reminding us as it tells it beautifully quirky but deeply meaningful story, that while difference is a fact of life, we’re all equal, all valuable and all wanting to find our place in life.
It’s sad that this point has to be so explicitly made to those without the empathy or understanding to see it for themselves, but thank god for novels like Life Hacks for a Little Alien which, with a love of words and libraries and the freedom to be found in knowledge and the connections that brings, pen a love letter to difference, to the power of finding your people and home and the delicious freedom this brings.