The Best Book You're Not Reading (12)

This is one book that has always stayed with me. The idea of there being a place where you go after you've passed on to another plane just resonates with me. I guess with what happened last week, I'm feeling a bit depressed and morose.  Liz Hall has died and has woken up on a ship taking her to Elsewhere.  She's not sure what is going on and needs a guide to tell her what is going on. I loved the idea of getting there and aging backwards, but to Liz that is not what she wants. She wants to have normal teenage experiences.

I am a huge Gabrielle Zevin fan and just devour all her books when they come out. I urge everyone who has ever had questions about the afterlife and death in general to read this book. I came out a blubbering mess, but I felt good about it.

From Booklist:

"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."

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. This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned. 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?"