Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11177 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-15
• Released on: 2007-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312367466
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From School Library Journal
Grade 7-10-This coming-of-age novel by Gabrielle Zavin (Farrar, 2005) has a unique twist. Although Liz is maturing, coping with disappointments, and controlling her anger, she is getting younger. Having been killed by a hit and run driver, she now lives in Elsewhere with the grandmother who died before she was born. After death, the residents get younger until they become babies and are reborn onto Earth again. Initially mad at the driver and sad that she will not have a boyfriend and attend the prom, Liz misses her family and is sullen and depressed. Gradually, she begins to realize that life is not so bad in the hereafter. Although written in the second person, the text and the narration by Cassandra Morris draws listeners into this new world, giving them a sense of immediacy. Morris's youthful, gentle, slightly nasal voice clearly brings out Lizzie's life and frustrations, and her tone becomes harsh to show anger. For the most part, she reads quickly, almost sprightly, but at dramatic moments she slows to heighten suspense. There is no significant voice changes to differentiate between male and female characters. An excellent choice to motivate reluctant readers or just for enjoyment.-Claudia Moore, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Narration from beyond the grave has been cropping up with some frequency in YA novels this year, including Chris Crutcher's The Sledding Hill and Adele Griffin's Where I Want to Be (both 2005). But this example, Zevin's second novel and her first for the YA audience, is a work of powerful beauty that merits judgment independent of any larger trend.

The setting is an elaborately conceived afterlife called Elsewhere, a distinctly secular island realm of surprising physical solidity (no cottony clouds or pearly gates here), where the dead exist much as they once did--except that no one dies or is born, and aging occurs in reverse, culminating when the departed are returned to Earth as infants to start the life cycle again.

Having sailed into Elsewhere's port aboard a cruise ship populated by mostly elderly passengers, 15-year-old head-trauma victim Liz Hall does not go gently into Elsewhere's endless summer. She is despairing, intractable, sullen, and understandably furious: "You mean I'll never go to college or get married or get big boobs or live on my own or get my driver's license or fall in love?" She rejects her new existence, spending endless hours keeping tabs on surviving family and friends through magical coin-operated telescopes, and refusing to take the suggestions offered by a well-meaning Office of Acclimation. Eventually, though, she begins to listen. She takes a job counseling deceased pets, forges an unexpected romance with a young man struggling with heartbreaks, and finds simple joy in the awareness that "a life is a good story . . . even a crazy, backward life like hers." Periodic visits with an increasingly youthful Liz, concluding with her journey down the "River" to be reborn, bring the novel to a graceful, seamless close.

Although the book may prove too philosophical for some, Zevin offers readers more than a gimmick-driven novel of ideas: the world of Elsewhere is too tangible for that. "A human's life is a beautiful mess," reflects Liz, and the observation is reinforced with strikingly conceived examples: a newly dead thirtysomething falls in love with Liz's grandmother, who is biologically similar in age but experientially generations older; fresh arrivals reunite with spouses long since departed, creating incongruous May-December marriages and awkward love triangles (as Liz experiences when her boyfriend's wife suddenly appears). At one poignant moment, four-year-old Liz loses the ability to read. The passage she attempts to decipher, which comes from Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting, is another meditation on the march of time and change.

Although Zevin's conception of the afterlife will inevitably ruffle many theological feathers, the comfort it offers readers grieving for lost loved ones, as well as the simple, thrilling satisfaction derived from its bold engagement with basic, provocative questions of human existence, will far outweigh any offense its metaphysical perspective might give. Far more than just a vehicle for a cosmology, this inventive novel slices right to the bone of human yearning, offering up an indelible vision of life and death as equally rich sides of the same coin. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Customer Reviews

If you read nothing else READ THIS BOOK !!!
I believe this to be
one of the best books I have ever read.
I absolutely loved this book.

Lizzie is killed in a hit and run accident and Elsewhere is the story of
her ' afterlife '. I don't wish to write any more than that because this
book is an absolute must- read. To tell more of the story would be to
spoil a book that will really challenge your beliefs and perspective
about life after death. No-one really knows what happens after death.
Each reader will bring their own personal philosophy to Zevin's story,
but what became apparent as I progressed through the book was that if
life after death was like the Elsewhere of the story, human beings would
fear death less and learn to appreciate wherever they are in their stage
of development in-life and after-life.

Zevin has taken such an everyday concept, turned it on its head and
written what can only be described as a convincing believable story
about where we go and what happens to everyone when they die.

The tone is hopeful, the prose realistic and beautiful. The ending is
utterly perfect. The story is infused with life lessons and gentle
morals without being sanctimonious in the least. In some ways I find it
hard to say all that I really feel about this book, that my words will
not do justice to the story.

Zevin has left no stone unturned. Her tale covers: what happens to
animals, how you progress to the ' afterlife,' how you make contact with
life on earth, and how you become reborn, amongst many other questions
people have about ' what happens when you die ?'. The story is in no way
contrived but highly plausible. I found myself crying consistently on
and off throughout the story, not because it was sad, but because it was
so buoyant and made so much sense about dealing with what is almost
always a disagreeable topic.

Elsewhere is a book that good readers of 13 and above would enjoy. It
poses so many philosophical questions and ideas that would be excellent
for use in a " Gifted and Talented " class. The idea of getting younger
as opposed to getting older would be an excellent starting point for
some creative writing. Students often want to get older quickly before
they've had chance to experience being young, so the possibility of
becoming younger and debating what happens at the point of birth could
open up some amazing philosophical discussion.

In short this book is brilliant. If you read nothing else for the rest
of the year, read this.

Waking Up Dead
Liz Hall wakes up dead one morning. That's definitely not the way to start off the day.

At first, she thinks it's all a dream, but then she remembers being hit by a car. The realization sets in that she'll never fall in love, never get her driver's license, and never see her family again. She spends her days on the observation deck where passengers can peek into the lives of their loved ones still alive. It takes Liz's dead grandmother to show Liz that death is worth living and that it's possible to have all the things she thought she'd lost even if she's going to have to live her life backwards.

A great young adult and older story about living life (or death) to the fullest.

Stunning
I went to the book store the other day, and I was picking and choosing my way through the YA section when this one caught my eye. Glancing at the cover, it didn't look too much different from the others on the New Reads shelf, but one glance inside and I realized how special this book is.

Right in the store, I read the first few pages, making sure it wasn't another frothy, badly written popularity-and-such book. And it wasn't. I practically threw away the book I had specifically come to buy, and spent the entire night reading this instead. As someone else has already mentioned, I started crying near the end, and continued to do so for about ten minutes afterward. This book touches a nerve somewhere deep down, where we all wonder about death, life, and love. (And in case you're wondering, I've only cried at one book before, and no movies ever, so this is a big deal) This book is unassuming at first glance, but reading it made me think about the big things that I think we all wonder about, the things that book should be about. I am pleased that somebody still knows that YA books don't have to be trashy-teen-movie style. Read this book, it's fabulous.