Elsewhere by Gabrielle ZevinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Liz Hall gets hit by a car, dies, and goes to Elsewhere, where she is supposed to age backwards until she is born again.
Elsewhere is mostly about coming to terms with death and grief. Liz grieves for the things she will never experience in life: turning sixteen, prom, falling in love, learning to drive - all the things one associates with adulthood. The themes may seem heavy, but the writing itself is light, dealing with Liz's denial and anger in ways that aren't too over-the-top and yet full of teenage angst. I mean, how else do you accept you're dead when you wake up on a ship with no memory of what happened?
But as Liz soon finds out, she can still have most of those longed-for experiences in Elsewhere, once she lets go of her past life on Earth. It won't be exactly the same, but living is what you make of it, no matter where you are. She even gets more than she bargained for, with heartbreak thrown into the mix!
There's no twist ending to this. You know from the start that when Liz ages down young enough, her story in Elsewhere will end, rather like another death, but culminating in a new birth.
Note: I received a digital ARC of this book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux via Edelweiss. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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