Book Title: elsewhere
Date Finished: November 19, 2005
Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Year Published: 2005
Pages: 275
Genre: Young Adult
Rated: B+ – I couldn't put this book down. I carved out extra reading time just so I could finish it. This book got carted into the bathroom with me, read over meals, read at work, or kept me up late at night. If this author has more work, I will certainly read it.
Library
Comments: This book, elsewhere, is an impossible novel for me to describe, so I'm going to let the publisher do that. All I will say is that it was a great read. I really enjoy this new author, I have read both of her books this year, and she has a wonderfully strange and interesting imagination. I will definitely keep an eye out for more by her.
From B&N:
Is it possible to grow up while getting younger?
Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It's quiet and peaceful. You can't get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere's museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe's psychiatric practice. Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth.
But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen (again). She wants to get her driver's license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. 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. And it is not going well.
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? This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.
my aunt gave me this book to read 2 days ago, while we were on vacation and it took me those 2 days to finish the book. it seems as if everyone's afraid to grow old and to die, but after reading this book i seemed to have felt differently about life. it allowed me to accept death and the lose that comes with it. life is spontaneous and fate controls itself and there's nothing you can do about it.
I worry that many who read this book seem to think it is an accurate account of the process! Do people really believe what they read? It seems so, even if it doesn't make sense. For instance, does it make sense to say God is whoever people think he/she/it is before they die? That's who he/she/it is to them? Therefore, he/she/it (God) cannot be real to himself/herself/itself! There is no God in this story, only the Hindu version of an afterlife, minus the karma.
I think this book comforts people because it suggests there is no God to get to know. Only endless whatever you already know, which would be comforting. No ultimate purpose, etc.