Book Title & Alexandra's Review

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

High School

Welcome to Elsewhere.

It’s warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older.

Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up after she dies. It’s 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 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 doesn’t know. Can she 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 is the kind of afterlife I like. You age backward. What a great idea! It is sad, though, if you die young and you won’t be able to experience adult life. Elsewhere is more ideal when you have lived your life and have excepted that you will die and then realize you’re in a world where you’ll age backward and relive your youth and maybe see some of your loved ones who haven’t gone back to Earth yet.

Like most female characters, Liz spends most of the story complaining and feeling depressed. But unlike most female characters, she has every right to be upset. Her life was snatched away before she had a chance to live.

If you like Elsewhere, you may enjoy the TV series The Good Place.

Like Elsewhere, the show doesn’t talk about religious theories behind death, which is very difficult to do.

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