Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Publication Date: August 2005
Book Acquisition: bought new paperback
(from Goodreads)
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.
Elsewhere is my second Gabrielle Zevin book and I have to say, I'm impressed :) I really enjoyed this one. Such a different take on the afterlife. I really liked how it wasn't heaven (or hell for that matter) - Elsewhere is unlike any place I could have imagined. Aging backwards? At first I couldn't see how Zevin was going to pull it off - but she did. It was so interesting to see Liz come to terms not only with her death but with her new life as well.
A really sweet book! Love and hope and family and friends in such a unique setting. I really loved where all the characters wound up in the end and I'm very much looking forward to reading more by Zevin.
**In my Mimi Reviews I explore older, sometimes obscure books I have found in my travels and wish to share with my readers**
**This book was read as part of The Neverending Shelf's Clear the Clutter Challenge -- I loved it so much that I'm keeping it!**
So glad you liked this book - I remember ADORING it, and I've been sad lately, as I saw it made it on a couple lists of the worst YA books of all time.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand - it was fabulous!
I thought this one was just ok but I did love the dogs. Now when I imagine meeting dogs in heaven I imagine the dialogs that happened in this book.
ReplyDelete