“Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.”

“What must we look like to aliens?” is a question that has prompted many a writer to write a story about just that. Do they think us good? Kind? Weak? Cruel? Bad? Greedy? Strong? The narrator of this book – an alien – comes to the conclusion that humans are all of the above and more and less.

“The tea seemed to be making things better. It was a hot drink made of leaves, used in times of crisis as a means of restoring normality.”

The unnamed narrator arrives on Earth with the task of deleting the knowledge of the Reimann hypothesis – this is a mathematical hypothesis that apparently once proven could lead to space travel – it is a credit to the writing of the book that I kept reading after I learnt it was ultimately about maths.

Once on Earth, however, the narrator becomes confused by the differences between what he has been told about humans and what he observes about humans.

“One life form’s gold is another life form’s tin can.”

The book starts better than it ends, and as the copy of the book I was reading belonged to my mother, I understand why she told me I could keep the copy as “I’m never going to want to read it again.” I, too, will probably never read this book again, but I did enjoy it. A book about the miracle of human existence, the miracle of how we have built our lives – and from the viewpoint of aliens – the miracle of how we consider ourselves advanced and most miraculous of all a book about maths that I enjoyed reading.