On Our Way to Elsewhere

By Destinee A.

Gabrielle Zevin is a young author and screenwriter straight from NYC who specializes in realistic fiction, with a hint of unconventional concepts. Her magic realism novel, Elsewhere, is an unorthodox ghost story that is targeted to an adolescent audience, making the book quite relatable to its readers.

Elizabeth Marie Hall was a young teen who was out riding her bike one morning, until she was hit by a bus. When she wakes, she finds herself on a one-way cruise to Elsewhere, which is the location of which the afterlife inhabit. Upon her arrival (and some time after), Elizabeth finds that afterlife in Elsewhere is much like her previous life: seeking employment for money, possibly searching for a significant other, and experiencing jealousy. As her new life progresses, Elizabeth continues to meet old relatives and new acquaintances and figures out how to be happy with her modern living situation.

Due to Zevin's intentions for the audience of her novel, her choice of vocabulary was rather limited. I was first given this book for a group assignment back in the seventh grade, and now that I've revisited it I can most definitely see why. Rather than using varied verbs such as "raced" or "scurried", elementary verbs such as "walked" and "ran" are repeatedly used. Another literary method I never enjoy the use of is sentence fragments placed in parentheses. Zevin uses this tactic in her novel numerous times, and I find it rather annoying. For example, at one point in the beginning of the novel, Zevin writes "But Liz is fifteen (almost sixteen),". I find this habit to be very redundant to the story, and I find it almost irritating to see one of these fragments at least twice per chapter.

Regardless of what I find to be annoying about literary writing styles, I really enjoyed Elsewhere and have been anticipating reading it again for quite a few years. I generally find the concept of disembodied entities to be intriguing in the majority of cases. If you enjoy realistic fiction that's based all around life in the afterlife, I highly suggest you give this book a chance for the sake of the plot.