elsewhereby Gabrielle ZevinI have a personal love affair with the word "elsewhere". It all started when I first heard Sarah McLachlan sing the word in a song of the same name off the Fumbling Toward Ecstasy LP. I fell madly in love with that song and have since thought of "elsewhere" as somewhere free and magical and a place where I can find solace. I always thought the concept of Beyond Elsewhere was even more fantastical and hence the name of my main blog.Apparently Monkey offered me this book last summer, but I honestly have no recollection of that. Could be I just wasn't in a non-fantasy type book, young adult or not. Could be that it really didn't interest me at the time, however how I could pass up a book titled "elsewhere" is beyond me. (ha! beyond elsewhere! No pun intended and everything, you know.) Not to mention it also has a snowglobe on the cover and snowglobes are magical, too!So anyway, I bought this book over the weekend and read it in an afternoon and I still can't tell if I liked it or not. The farther away I get from having finished it the more I think I like it. I know I loved the author's idea of what happens after death. I really loved the idea that people age backwards once they die and end up in Elsewhere. You age backwards from the day you pass on until you become a baby again and get sent down the river to be born anew.This is the way things are for people and animals in Elsewhere. When Elizabeth (Liz) gets hit by a car while driving her bike just shy of her sixteenth birthday, she wakes up on a cruise ship to Elsewhere. She takes a while to realize she's dead and accept the fate that awaits her as well, but discovers many things about herself, friends she makes and family she never met (she stays with her Grandmother, Bonnie, who died right before she was born).Liz stays with her grandmother and tries to come to terms with never being able to contact the living again, though she does become focused on trying more than once. It's hard for her to accept that she's dead and will only get younger - never get her driver's license, never have a boyfriend, never get married.In Elsewhere you don't have a job you have an avocation and it makes your soul complete. Liz ends up working with dogs, helping them acclimate to Elsewhere as it turns out she speaks perfect Canine.As I tend to be overly sensitive at times I don't particularly like heavy, angst-laden story lines however elsewhere tends to walk the lighter side of the line while dealing with a very serious and often controversial subject - what happens after you die? There were moments where I found myself chuckling out loud and others where I had to wipe tears from my eyes in order to be able to see the words on the page. The parts that made me really sad were ironically happy moments. The characters weren't dying they were being reborn. When Sadie, Liz's new dog in Elsewhere becomes a young puppy again, eyes closed and gets sent down the rive, I was outright crying. But it was a GOOD thing, it meant that out there on Earth, someone had a new puppy to love! Sadie gets to live again! But it's hard to watch the characters get younger and find they can't read and become small, helpless babies again.I wish I had a book like this to read when I was in school, though I doubt I would have liked all the picking it apart to find the hidden meanings that would have followed. Heh heh. I loved how this story made me think about something I never really thought about all that indepthly (I know that isn't a word) but it made me look at things in another way. Something other than I was taught in school and Sunday School. It was a fascinating take on death and afterlife.I think this is a book I would actually read again in a few years or so. I believe I may have missed things or was confused about and I think it most certainly needs a second read. Though I know I will start crying even before I get to the parts I cried about this time just knowing they were coming up. I am such a sap. ;)