Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

High School

Welcome to Elsewhere.

It’s warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older.

Elsewhere is where 15-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she died. It’s 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 16, not 14 again. 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 doesn’t know. Can she 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?

This is the kind of afterlife I like. You age backwards, what a great idea! It is sad though if you died young and will never experience an adult life. I guess Elsewhere is more ideal when you’ve lived your life and excepted that you’re going to die and then realizing you’re in a world where you’ll age backwards and relive your youth and maybe see some of your loved one who haven’t gone back to Earth yet.

Like most female characters, Liz spends most of the story complaining and feeling depressed. But unlike most female characters, she has every right to complain. Her life was snatched away before she had a chance to live.

If you like Elsewhere, you’ll like the TV series The Good Place.

Like Elsewhere, the show doesn’t talk about religious theories behind death, which is very difficult to do.