BCTELA

Gemini Cheng holds a degree in English Literature and when she isn't busy reading books, she is selling them at Vancouver Kidsbooks. 

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Where do we come from? Where do we go when we die? Fifteen-year-old Liz finds the answers in a very definitive afterlife when she is the victim of a hit-and-run in Gabrielle Zevin's Elsewhere.

Elsewhere is intended for a younger teen audience, grade seven right up to twelve, who has the same questions everyone else does about what happens when we walk into the light. It is reminiscent of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, another novel about the afterlife of a young girl. Whereas The Lovely Bones gave us a glimpse into Sebold's idea of the afterlife, Zevin gives us the whole shebang. Death is not just a state of un-being; it is a place that has all the characteristics of an urban city. The recently deceased are counseled as they find a new job and prepare for living after dying.

In the denial stage of death, Liz discovers she can continue to keep an eye on her family while she's dead, but it's going to cost her - literally. She has to pay five eternims, Elsewhere's currency, to have a peep through the binoculars at her family and friends on Earth. It becomes a serious addiction that stops her from being able to move on. Eventually, with the help of her attractive young grandmother, Liz is able to put the past behind her - but most readers will find this as painful as Liz does.

Liz learns that it takes a lot to be dead successfully, just as most young teens are learning that life gets exponentially harder as they grow up. In Elsewhere, the deceased don't grow older; they actually age backwards until they are babies again and are sent off to try a new life. The recaptured youth of all the characters inadvertently illustrates the value of being young and in love. Yet, Liz still has all the responsibilities that most students will face in a few years: she finds a career she likes, is able to buy a car, and starts paying her grandmother back for all those eternims she spent on a lost cause.

In this unusual situation of a girl who grows up as she de-ages, students will find that they approve of how Liz handles her own death, not because she makes the right decisions but because she makes realistic ones. This will be a comfort to teens who find it difficult to choose paths in life based on their head or their heart. In a sense, we all want to be like Liz: forever young and not afraid to follow our dreams.