Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Elsewhere
Book Review: I'm sitting in school, but my soul is Elsewhere.
Summary: 5 Stars
Elsewhere is the magical story about Elizabeth Hall's life in Elsewhere. Elsewhere is the place to live up your death where everyone gracefully ages... back to childhood. Watch Liz relive her life with new, and some familiar, faces.
Liz zipped up her wet suit and with Owen, the man she met and fell in love with, she took a dive. The two of them swam, deeper and deeper untill they reached the Well. Liz sends a message to Zooey, her best friend from Earth, at her wedding. Liz's message via bottle told her where to watch Zooey and her husband on their big day. Liz tried every running water source until finally Alvy heard her. Alvy, Liz's little brother always hears her no matter where she may be screaming from or when.
I really think every child afraid of death should be forced to read this book untill they've changed their minds. Miss Gabrielle Zevin's description of how after life should be is mind blowing and, while entertaining, should be taken seriously. Elsewhere is beautifully written and is a perfect example of how someone in that position may react to their death. It's a wonderful book and I highly reccomend it to people 11 and up. You'll love reading about Liz aging backward to childhood and [barely] being sent back down the river back to Earth.
Book Review: IT 5 Stars
Elsewhere is the best book ever!!!!!!! It is a story about a girl named Liz who dies by being hit by a taxi. You MUST READ!!!!!!! ( yay Lucy the pug)!Book Review: If you read only one book this year, please do NOT make it this one!!
Summary: 1 Stars
If I could give this book zero stars I would. This is possibly the worst book I have ever read. The writing style is drivel. ALmost the entire book is conversation. Sometimes details can drive you nuts but as I turned each page in this book I was practically begging for some description of anything! Everything in this book, and i mean everything is glossed over. No feel for the characters what so ever. I mean we have a story taking place in the afterlife and nothing is written to give you a feel of how the place looks!! I will save you the effort of reading it and sum the book up right now, almost exactly as it is written:
Liz dies, Liz is upset, Liz meets a boy, Liz gets a dog, Liz and boy have a fight, Liz is upset, Liz and boy make up, Liz is happy, dog goes back to earth, Liz goes back to earth. I saved you 300 pages.
PS the only reason I am sitting here being so critical is that I bought this booked based on a good review I read about it. So I would like to warn future readers in advance, it is horrible.
Book Review: Interesting, but not great
Summary: 4 Stars
Gabrielle Zevin's YA novel Elsewhere conjures up an interesting answer to the question of what happens to us after death. Elsewhere exists alongside but apart from Earth. Death itself turns out to be much like life--rather boringly so, in fact--the singular exception being that the dead age backwards, regressing from the age they were at death to infancy and, finally, rebirth. This makes things interesting logistically, as a dead person's "real" and physical ages don't correspond, and the relative ages between people who knew one another in life are more often than not altered significantly. Also strange is the body's backward development: tattoos eventually disappear and bald heads sprout hair; people who've been gumming food for decades teethe.
The protagonist of Elsewhere is Elizabeth Hall, who is killed in a hit-and-run accident at the age of 15. The book follows her death from her initial difficulties accepting the truth through her embrace of life in Elsewhere. I found the book clunky in parts: A couple things Lizzie does--but which I won't reveal--don't seem realistic, and none of the characters jumps off the page as particularly appealing or true to life. The idea of talking dogs also left me cold. (In Elsewhere, communication with dogs is an easy matter of picking up a new language, Canine.) Presumably this is meant to appeal to readers, but dogs would lose much of their charm if they could betray our confidences or comment on our ability as providers. They'd just be stupid humans with fur.
In short, Elsewhere is not a great book, but the author's conception of an afterlife is an interesting one, and young readers may be intrigued by the logistics of reverse aging.
-- Debra Hamel
Book Review: It all starts with a girl
Summary: 5 Stars
Creative and very interesting to read, this story about a girl and what happens to her after she is killed by a hit and run driver grabs your attention. Zevin wrote about something we all ask, where do we go when we die. She answers this question in an interesting, capturing way. This story will grab your attention.-CC Wang