I mooched Elsewhere for my sister it had been recommended somewhere for young adults, and I am trying to interest her in something other than Twilight and its offshoots. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?Įlsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year. And now that she's dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn't want with a grandmother she has only just met. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe's psychiatric practice.Įlsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere's museums. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. Is it possible to grow up while getting younger? I'd recommend it for maybe the late elementary/middle school age group, for whom the ideas would probably seem new and interesting instead of under-developed.From the author of the Birthright series comes Gabrielle Zevin's Elsewhere, a moving, often funny young adult novel about grief, death, and loss that will stay with readers long after the last page is turned. That said, it was an enjoyable read, and it kept me up all night. I realize that I'm probably judging Elsewhere on criteria it never promised to deliver on, but still, I think it's reasonable to expect a book about the afterlife to go further down the road of afterlife dynamics than Elsewhere does. Instead, though, what I found out was that I was expecting more than this book intended to deliver. I almost expected to find out that everything was a bit too smooth for a reason, for there to be a Big Bad behind the scenes (who figured out the whole cyclical pattern, anyway? What would happen if babies weren't sent to the River? What keeps the whole acclimation system running smoothly? Altruism? Really? It feels more likely to be part of a nefarious plot.) or to find out that everyone in Elsewhere were actually robots, or something. In fact, everything in Elsewhere worked just a bit too smoothly, without enough consideration of the difficult issues involved. All of those aspects were present in the story, but their treatment was generally superficial and felt unrealistic. I wanted more exploration of, among other things, the economics of Elsewhere society, the dynamics of relationships that span death, and the existential issues of aging backwards and knowing the actual way that the world works. If you're considering it from a YA perspective it's probably quite good, but there wasn't enough depth to really be interesting as an adult reader. In the category of books written from the perspective of dead girls (and it's very odd that that's a category), and also in the category of speculative fiction about the afterlife, it came up a bit short, for me. I read the entire thing in one night, so it must have been compelling, but I wasn't amazed. It is a novel that tells of sadness with heartbreaking honesty, and of love and happiness with uplifting brilliance. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?įull of the most ingenious detail and woven around the most touching and charming relationships, this is a novel of hope, of redemption and rebirth. In Elsewhere, death is only the beginning.Įlsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she is killed in a hit-and-run accident. You can't get sick, and you can't get older. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are beautiful. Elsewhere is such a book” - The New York Times Book Review “Every so often a book comes along with a premise so fresh and arresting it seems to exist in a category all its own. ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME
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