Elsewhere (Hardcover)

by Gabrielle Zevin (Author) "Elizabeth Hall wakes in a strange bed in a strange room with the strange feeling that her sheets are trying to smother her..." (more)
Key Phrases: parallel parking, Grandma Betty, Aldous Ghent, Owen Welles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 7-10–What happens when you die? Where do you go? What do you do? Zevin provides answers to these questions in this intriguing novel, centering on the death of Liz Hall, almost 16 years old and looking forward to all that lies ahead: learning to drive, helping her best friend prepare for the prom, going to college, falling in love. Killed in a hit-and-run accident, Liz struggles to understand what has happened to her, grief-stricken at all she has lost, and incapable of seeing the benefits of the Elsewhere in which she finds herself. Refusing to participate in this new life, Liz spends her time looking longingly down at the family and friends back on Earth who go on without her. But the new environment pulls her into its own rhythms. Liz meets the grandmother she never knew, makes friends, takes a job, and falls in love as she and the other inhabitants of Elsewhere age backward one year for each year that they are there. Zevin's third-person narrative calmly, but surely guides readers through the bumpy landscape of strongly delineated characters dealing with the most difficult issue that faces all of us. A quiet book that provides much to think about and discuss.–Sharon Grover, Arlington County Department of Libraries, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Narration from beyond the grave has been cropping up with some frequency in YA novels this year, including Chris Crutcher's The Sledding Hill and Adele Griffin's Where I Want to Be (both 2005). But this example, Zevin's second novel and her first for the YA audience, is a work of powerful beauty that merits judgment independent of any larger trend.

The setting is an elaborately conceived afterlife called Elsewhere, a distinctly secular island realm of surprising physical solidity (no cottony clouds or pearly gates here), where the dead exist much as they once did--except that no one dies or is born, and aging occurs in reverse, culminating when the departed are returned to Earth as infants to start the life cycle again.

Having sailed into Elsewhere's port aboard a cruise ship populated by mostly elderly passengers, 15-year-old head-trauma victim Liz Hall does not go gently into Elsewhere's endless summer. She is despairing, intractable, sullen, and understandably furious: "You mean I'll never go to college or get married or get big boobs or live on my own or get my driver's license or fall in love?" She rejects her new existence, spending endless hours keeping tabs on surviving family and friends through magical coin-operated telescopes, and refusing to take the suggestions offered by a well-meaning Office of Acclimation. Eventually, though, she begins to listen. She takes a job counseling deceased pets, forges an unexpected romance with a young man struggling with heartbreaks, and finds simple joy in the awareness that "a life is a good story . . . even a crazy, backward life like hers." Periodic visits with an increasingly youthful Liz, concluding with her journey down the "River" to be reborn, bring the novel to a graceful, seamless close.

Although the book may prove too philosophical for some, Zevin offers readers more than a gimmick-driven novel of ideas: the world of Elsewhere is too tangible for that. "A human's life is a beautiful mess," reflects Liz, and the observation is reinforced with strikingly conceived examples: a newly dead thirtysomething falls in love with Liz's grandmother, who is biologically similar in age but experientially generations older; fresh arrivals reunite with spouses long since departed, creating incongruous May-December marriages and awkward love triangles (as Liz experiences when her boyfriend's wife suddenly appears). At one poignant moment, four-year-old Liz loses the ability to read. The passage she attempts to decipher, which comes from Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting, is another meditation on the march of time and change.

Although Zevin's conception of the afterlife will inevitably ruffle many theological feathers, the comfort it offers readers grieving for lost loved ones, as well as the simple, thrilling satisfaction derived from its bold engagement with basic, provocative questions of human existence, will far outweigh any offense its metaphysical perspective might give. Far more than just a vehicle for a cosmology, this inventive novel slices right to the bone of human yearning, offering up an indelible vision of life and death as equally rich sides of the same coin. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374320918
• ISBN-13: 978-0374320911
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (139 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #259,351 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you read nothing else READ THIS BOOK !!!, October 11, 2005

By	http://severina1971.blogspot.com "Severina1971" (http://severina1971.blogspot.com) - See all my reviews

I believe this to be
one of the best books I have ever read.
I absolutely loved this book.

Lizzie is killed in a hit and run accident and Elsewhere is the story of
her ' afterlife '. I don't wish to write any more than that because this
book is an absolute must- read. To tell more of the story would be to
spoil a book that will really challenge your beliefs and perspective
about life after death. No-one really knows what happens after death.
Each reader will bring their own personal philosophy to Zevin's story,
but what became apparent as I progressed through the book was that if
life after death was like the Elsewhere of the story, human beings would
fear death less and learn to appreciate wherever they are in their stage
of development in-life and after-life.

Zevin has taken such an everyday concept, turned it on its head and
written what can only be described as a convincing believable story
about where we go and what happens to everyone when they die.

The tone is hopeful, the prose realistic and beautiful. The ending is
utterly perfect. The story is infused with life lessons and gentle
morals without being sanctimonious in the least. In some ways I find it
hard to say all that I really feel about this book, that my words will
not do justice to the story.

Zevin has left no stone unturned. Her tale covers: what happens to
animals, how you progress to the ' afterlife,' how you make contact with
life on earth, and how you become reborn, amongst many other questions
people have about ' what happens when you die ?'. The story is in no way
contrived but highly plausible. I found myself crying consistently on
and off throughout the story, not because it was sad, but because it was
so buoyant and made so much sense about dealing with what is almost
always a disagreeable topic.

Elsewhere is a book that good readers of 13 and above would enjoy. It
poses so many philosophical questions and ideas that would be excellent
for use in a " Gifted and Talented " class. The idea of getting younger
as opposed to getting older would be an excellent starting point for
some creative writing. Students often want to get older quickly before
they've had chance to experience being young, so the possibility of
becoming younger and debating what happens at the point of birth could
open up some amazing philosophical discussion.

In short this book is brilliant. If you read nothing else for the rest
of the year, read this.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Waking Up Dead, October 17, 2005

By	Angela J. Thorpe "desertprincess" (Middletown, CT, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Liz Hall wakes up dead one morning. That's definitely not the way to start off the day.

At first, she thinks it's all a dream, but then she remembers being hit by a car. The realization sets in that she'll never fall in love, never get her driver's license, and never see her family again. She spends her days on the observation deck where passengers can peek into the lives of their loved ones still alive. It takes Liz's dead grandmother to show Liz that death is worth living and that it's possible to have all the things she thought she'd lost even if she's going to have to live her life backwards.

A great young adult and older story about living life (or death) to the fullest.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning, September 5, 2005

By	Kelly Graham "bibliophile" (Issaquah, WA) - See all my reviews

I went to the book store the other day, and I was picking and choosing my way through the YA section when this one caught my eye. Glancing at the cover, it didn't look too much different from the others on the New Reads shelf, but one glance inside and I realized how special this book is.

Right in the store, I read the first few pages, making sure it wasn't another frothy, badly written popularity-and-such book. And it wasn't. I practically threw away the book I had specifically come to buy, and spent the entire night reading this instead. As someone else has already mentioned, I started crying near the end, and continued to do so for about ten minutes afterward. This book touches a nerve somewhere deep down, where we all wonder about death, life, and love. (And in case you're wondering, I've only cried at one book before, and no movies ever, so this is a big deal) This book is unassuming at first glance, but reading it made me think about the big things that I think we all wonder about, the things that book should be about. I am pleased that somebody still knows that YA books don't have to be trashy-teen-movie style. Read this book, it's fabulous.