Paperspine Blog

Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin, is based on an interesting premise: when we die, we go Elsewhere. In Elsewhere, you age backwards until you once again become a baby and are sent back to Earth to live your next life. Liz, the main character of this book, wakes up to find herself on a ship headed to Elsewhere. Once she figures out where she’s going – and why she’s going there – Liz becomes distraught. She’s only 15 and figures that she’s going to miss out on a lot: no prom, no boyfriend, no driver’s license. 

When she gets off of the ship, her grandmother, Betty, who Liz has never met, is there to meet her. Liz moves in with Betty and has trouble coping with her own death. She borrows enternims, the currency in elsewhere, from Betty in order to watch the people in her life from the “ODs” (observation decks). The ODs work much like the pay-binoculars do here on Earth, each coin gets you a certain amount of time. Liz becomes addicted to the ODs. She spends hours there every day. Nothing Betty convinces Liz to quit. Eventually, something persuades Liz that life in Elsewhere might not be so bad after all.

I really enjoyed reading this book. There are all sorts of little delights scattered throughout the story. I would love to tell you about them, but I think it is better to discover them on your own.

And lest you think this story is just about Liz’s addiction to the ODs, I’d like to point out that it isn’t. After Liz decides to stop going to the ODs, she lives out the rest of her “life” in Elsewhere and the book follows her until she becomes a baby again. There are some good times and some bad times, some happy time and some sad times, and even a few happy-yet-sad times. (I nearly cried at one of these happy-sad times at the end of the book.) As they say, life happens. Even in Elsewhere.