Elsewhere

I really enjoyed the reading of this book and felt Cassandra Morris was indeed suited to the telling. The thought of aging backwards was an interesting concept and the return of the babies to earth gave food for thought. Ms. Zevin's imagination was in full swing with the lives the inhabitants of Elsewhere were living or not living as the case may be.

I thought that Cassandra Morris did a great job reading this title. Her voice was really suited to the material. I also thought it was a great book -- really hopeful and well written -- a great book to discuss for young and old.

Light-hearted, simplistic, yet thought-provoking! Although, written for young adults, I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook. It is one of few audiobooks that I have felt compelled to jot down a review. It gives a unique look into life-after-death and reincarnation. Liz Hall, the main character, is a likeable 15 year old. She is very typical in her initial thinking, yet grows emotionally as she decreases physically in age. As a side note, I loved the idea of understanding and talking to dogs. I laughed out loud at the conversation of Sadie and Liz about drinking out of the toilet. I can definately see why teachers everywhere are using this as a group-read discussion book. Well done author Gabrielle Zevin and Cassandra Morris as the narrator!

I seriously loved this book. It is a neat way to look at what happens after, and why not? We really don't know -- so it is great to imagine a place like Elsewhere. Love, family, friends, pets -- it could be a wonderful place.

This was the first book I read by Gabrielle Zevin and it has been a benchmark YA, to which I hold all others up to for comparison. High-schooler Liz was hit by a car when on her bike, tragically ending her life. When she next wakes, she is on a boat headed to a place called Elsewhere. Elsewhere isn't the heaven many of us Christians have pictured. In this peaceful town, you live with other dead, but you age backwards. Liz is extremely resistant to being dead, refusing to let go of her friends and family. I won't get into any more detail except to say, this book really spoke to me. For many of us, we are so busy living our lives, that we forget to really LIVE our lives. Liz is a teen that personifies the passion and verve teens have for their LIVING their lives, an element of young life that we forget when we grow up.

It's sad to watch her grieve this way, but it does have a sweet, hopeful ending. Many YA books are loaded with angst, and this one does not fall short of that expectation, but this book shows the nature of that tight grasp teens have of their own emotional attachment with their friends, families, and how important those emotional reactions are to who a teen is.

In Elsewhere, Gabrielle Zevin describes an afterlife very much like life except that people age backwards from the time of their death and, when they are babies again, are returned to Earth for another go-round. Into this world comes Liz, dead by accident at 15, angry and depressed that she will never become an adult. While the author works hard to make her afterlife internally consistent and filled with a host of sympathetic and interesting characters, she's never able, in my view, to overcome a central problem with her plot: her afterlife is a benign but horrible place. Who wants to have the mind and desires of a 45 year-old and be trapped in the body of a 9 year-old. Crreepy. Talking animals and the occasional mermaid are just lipstick on the proverbial pig. I still gave the book 2 stars for not being badly written.