Elsewhere

“Liz looks out the porthole that is parallel to her bed. Sure enough, she sees hundreds of miles of early-morning darkness and ocean in all directions, blanketed by a healthy coating of fog. If she squints, Liz can make out a boardwalk. There, she sees the forms of her parents and her little brother, Alvy. Ghostly and becoming smaller by the second, her father is crying and her mother is holding him.” 

In depicting the journey to Elsewhere as a voyage, Zevin draws on a broad range of cultural traditions. Peoples as diverse as the ancient Greeks, Norse, and Japanese have all depicted the realms of the living and the dead as separated by a body of water; many mythologies also conceive of the afterlife as an island specifically, which is the form it takes in Elsewhere. These parallels speak to water’s multifaceted power as a symbol; it sustains life but can also destroy it, it changes form in ways that can evoke the shift from body to spirit, its depth and vastness speak to humanity’s fear of the unknown, etc. Zevin is building off of all these associations in her portrayal of Liz’s journey to the afterlife. 

“Liz thought the Egyptians should have lived in the pyramids and been buried in their huts (or wherever it was that ancient Egyptian people had lived.)” 

This is one of Elsewhere’s first references to ancient Egypt—a motif that Zevin often uses to illuminate the relationship between life and afterlife in the novel. At the time this particular passage takes place, Liz hasn’t fully realized that she’s dead, and her thoughts about Egyptian burial practices help illustrate why she is so resistant to the idea; Liz sees the pyramids as wasted on the dead, because in her eyes, life on Earth is the only real and meaningful existence a person has. Although the novel is sympathetic to certain aspects of this view—specifically, the importance of living in and enjoying the moment—much of its action is geared towards helping Liz realize that her life in Elsewhere is as worthwhile as her life on Earth was. 

“Although she does not know exactly what ‘the afterlife’ entails, she is fairly certain of one thing: she will never see her parents, her brother, or her friends again.” 

Apart from her experiences at the Well and on the Observation Decks, Liz’s assumption in this passage proves to be correct; because of the young age at which she died, she has already left Elsewhere by the time her friends and family from Earth arrive. This shared susceptibility to loss is one of the main points of similarity between life on Earth and life on Elsewhere, and it is what allows Zevin to use Liz’s death to explore the feelings of grief, anger, and denial more normally experienced by those who survive a loved one’s death.

“‘So I’ll never be an adult?’ Liz asks.

‘I wouldn’t look at it that way, Liz. Your mind still acquires experience and memories even while your body—’” 

Like many YA novels, Elsewhere is in part a coming-of-age story: it follows its protagonist through her first experiences with death, romance, work, etc., and it explores the way in which these experiences help her to grow. What makes it an unusual example of the genre is of course the fact that Liz does all of this while getting younger. However, while people in Elsewhere do eventually reach a point where they become psychologically similar to young children, most of the reverse aging process is physical. Thus, as Betty explains here, it’s possible for a teenager like Liz to become emotionally and intellectually mature even as she becomes biologically younger (though at the time the above conversation takes place, Liz fails to appreciate the distinction). 

“Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaningless. From Liz’s point of view, the question of what her life would be was now definitively answered. The story of her life is short and pointless: There once was a girl who got hit by a car and died. The end.” 

Liz’s sense that her life on Earth was “pointless” stems partly from her belief that she hadn’t yet had the chance to experience most of what makes life meaningful: moving away from home, pursuing a career, etc. This notion that she was “interrupted before [she’d] begun” is itself problematic (81), given that Liz’s life was already meaningful in at least one significant way: she was “happy, happy, happy” (77). However, the passage also speaks to a broader question the novel poses about the meaning of human existence: because life on both Earth and Elsewhere is finite, Liz wonders what the purpose of trying to achieve anything at all is. Ultimately, Elsewhere will argue that the mere fact that something is impermanent doesn’t erase its significance, while also suggesting that the way humans frame impermanence is often misguided: much of what we take to be loss can be viewed instead as change. 

“I think you’ll find […] that dying is just another part of living, Elizabeth. In time, you may even come to see your death as a birth.”

When Liz first arrives in Elsewhere, she is convinced that life in any meaningful sense of the word is behind her. As she puts it to her counselor Aldous, “My life is on Earth. […] My life is with my parents and my friends. My life is over” (86). The above passage is one of Aldous’s many attempts to convince Liz otherwise. As he sees it, life on Elsewhere is not just comparable to life on Earth, but it is actually an extension of it. This is not to say there are no differences between life and the afterlife, but these differences are in some ways superficial; Liz’s life might have changed since arriving in Elsewhere, but there’s still an underlying continuity with her experiences on Earth. 

“Canine is one of our most beautiful languages. Did you know that there are over three hundred words for love in Canine?” 

One of the more fantastical elements of Zevin’s novel is the ability of humans and animals to communicate with one another. Aldous’s words in this passage explain the significance of this narrative choice; the idea that dogs have more than three hundred ways to talk about love underscores both love’s importance and the fact that it can exist in many different forms (including, notably, between a human and their pet).

“My advice to you is to stop being lonely and to stop hating it here. That always works for me. […] Oh, and be happy! It’s easier to be happy than to be sad. Being sad takes a lot of work. It’s exhausting.” 

A dog gives Liz the above advice when he notices her brooding on a park bench; she has just come from watching Zooey’s prom. Since Liz’s problem is precisely that she is lonely and unhappy, the words might seem meaningless, however, one of the key ideas in Elsewhere is that happiness isn’t so much an emotion as it is a choice or an action—a conscious decision to see the best in and make the most of a situation. Ultimately, this is much “easier” than being upset or angry about one’s circumstances, since the latter solves nothing but is emotionally draining. 

“‘I didn’t choose to die […] so in that instance, there was no choice.’

‘No, of course you didn’t,’ Curtis says. ‘I suppose I meant there’s always a choice in situations where one has a choice, if that makes any sense.’” 

Choice, agency, and purpose are key themes in Elsewhere, though as Liz notes here, many aspects of human existence are beyond individual control. The remark comes on the heels of Curtis’s attempts to dissuade her from trying to reveal the identity of the driver that killed her—a course of action she says she has no “choice” but to pursue. Curtis’s response points to an important truth about the way choice functions in the novel: that people do have control over their own actions and reactions, including (as in this instance) any decision as to whether to hold on to anger over what’s past or to move forward with one’s life. 

“[Liz] feels empty. Anger and revenge gave her heft. Without her old friends to prop her up, she’s only left with a single question: what now?” 

As this passage reveals, part of the reason Liz clings so single-mindedly to the idea of revenge is because it gives her a sense of purpose—something she lacked during the first several weeks she spends in Elsewhere. Consequently, when Liz decides to give up her plan to reveal the identity of the driver who killed her, she feels rudderless and uncertain of what to do going forward. This is one reason why Liz calls about the DDA position as Chapter 8 ends; she realizes she needs to find a more positive way of giving her existence in Elsewhere purpose and direction.

“You go to work […] because you like it. That’s why we call it an avocation.” 

After Liz has been working at the DDA for a month, she begins to wonder what to do with the money she’s earning, since she doesn’t need to spend it on the kinds of things she would on Earth (a car, insurance, etc.). She brings this up to Aldous, and then asks why she’s working at all if she doesn’t really need the money. His response highlights the difference between jobs as they’re understood on Earth and the avocations people pursue in Elsewhere; avocations are meant to satisfy a person’s inherent need to create meaning and structure in their life, and perhaps even to help them become a more complete version of themself.

“Then either you throw the list [of things you miss] away and accept that you’re never going to have those things again, or you go about getting everything back.” 

Betty offers the above advice when Liz asks how she can stop missing her life on Earth. Broadly, her point is that there’s nothing to be gained by simply brooding over what’s been lost; the only way forward is to either accept the loss once and for all, or to try to solve it in some way. However, what’s particularly noteworthy about the passage is Liz’s response to it. Liz does in fact make a list as her grandmother suggests, but when it’s completed, she wonders whether it’s really necessary to choose between the two courses of action Betty proposed; she wonders, in other words, whether it’s possible to both accept a loss and repair it. This is a major idea in the novel, which ultimately suggests that the two approaches can in fact coincide: something may be lost in one form only to be regained in another.  

“That doesn’t just happen to people in Elsewhere, Liz […] Even on Earth, it’s difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything’s changed.” 

Chatting with Owen after Thanksgiving dinner, Liz admits that the homesickness she feels for Earth is exacerbated by the fact that she’s unlikely to see any of her friends or family again. However, while life in Elsewhere makes this reality particularly inescapable, it’s equally true of life on Earth. As Owen notes here, change and loss are unavoidable facts of human existence; people die, or move, or simply drift apart from one another over time. Accepting this is one of the major challenges Liz faces over the course of the novel. 

“I am wasting my death, Owen says to himself. I am like one of those people who spend all their lives watching TV instead of having real relationships. I have been here nearly ten years, and my most significant relationship is still with Emily.” 

The power love has to transform human lives is a key theme of Elsewhere. In fact, to the extent that failing to embrace life constitutes a kind of “death,” Zevin suggests that love can even bring a person back to life. This is the case with Owen, whose developing relationship with Liz serves as a catalyst in his own transformation; prior to meeting Liz, Owen has no real friends, hobbies, or indeed existence outside his job and his weekly visits to the OD. Although at the time Owen attributes his renewed interest in life to admiration of Liz’s own success in acclimating to Elsewhere, it becomes clear in retrospect that he is also falling in love with her. 

“‘If I’m to understand you correctly, you would have me endure hours of pain and suffering for a gesture?’

‘Yes,’ Liz deadpans, ‘I want to see ‘Liz For Now’ tattooed on your ass.’” 

Though humorous, Liz and Owen’s exchange about the latter’s tattoo also reveals important truths about the nature of love and life as Zevin portrays them. Since tattoos are more or less permanent, those who get them in honor of a significant other generally do so with the idea that the relationship will last for the duration of their lives. In Owen’s case, the text of the tattoo—“Emily Forever”—further underscores its status as a symbol of eternal devotion. In Elsewhere, however, tattoos can’t function the same way; new ones disappear almost immediately as the skin heals and the person ages backward, while those from a person’s time on Earth last only until that person reaches the age they were when they had the tattoo done. Zevin suggests that this is actually more akin to the true nature of love, which is often fleeting for one reason or another, but remains a meaningful experience. Similarly, the tattoo Liz proposes would quickly fade (and would acknowledge love’s transience in its very wording) but would be significant as a “gesture.”  

“It’s only to say that just because someone did something before doesn’t mean they have to do it still.” 

Curtis’s words come at the end of a lengthy discussion about Liz’s planned Release. After observing—seemingly irrelevantly—that John Lennon is now a gardener, Curtis offers the above as an explanation for why he and others like him have chosen avocations on Elsewhere that are completely unlike anything they did on Earth. The remark frustrates Liz, who has just accused Curtis of wasting his time fishing; as she sees it, he ought to be writing songs and performing them as he did on Earth. This inability to imagine Curtis being happy doing anything but what he’s always done speaks to Liz’s ongoing struggle to accept both the reality and (in some cases) the desirability of change. In a sense, it’s precisely this resistance to change that leads Liz to seek an early Release back to Earth; having (she thinks) lost Owen and thus her chance at the romantic relationship she’s always wanted, Liz can’t imagine that she might be able to find new and different sources of happiness in Elsewhere. 

“‘This isn’t working out,’ she knocks.

‘I know,’ Owen knocks back.

‘I will always love you,’ she knocks, ‘but our timing just isn’t right.’”

In keeping with Elsewhere’s broader message about accepting loss and change, one of the major points the novel makes about love has to do with the experience’s transience. Whereas characters like Liz initially assume love is only meaningful if it’s eternal, Zevin suggests that this is both unrealistic and untrue; even a love that lasts may evolve over time. This is the situation Emily and Owen find themselves in after being reunited in Elsewhere, having both changed in the intervening years. However, as Emily notes a moment later, this does not invalidate the significance of what they shared on Earth, or of the happy memories they have of their time together: “I think we were luckier than most […] We had a great life together, and we got a second chance, too. How many people can say that?” (215).  

“If I interrupt this life, I will never know how my life was supposed to turn out. A life is a good story, Liz realizes, even a crazy, backward life like hers. To cling to her old forward life was pointless. She would never have her old forward life. This backward life was her forward life when she really thought about it. It isn’t her time, and her desire to know how the story will end is too strong.” 

Significantly, Liz’s change of heart about returning to Earth is not fundamentally about Owen (who, as far as she knows at this point, is still committed to his relationship with Emily) or about anyone but herself. What she has instead realized is that despite adapting to life in Elsewhere in some respects, she has continued to judge her new “backward life” against the standards for happiness she established in her old “forward one”—for instance, her desire to fall in love and marry. Although natural, this refusal to let go of past dreams and aspirations is counterproductive; it doesn’t bring back her former life, but it does prevent her from seeing the unique forms of happiness and fulfillment available in her new life. 

“Then again […] the conditions are rarely very good anywhere, but love still happens all the time.”

In explaining why Liz might have chosen to return to Earth, Curtis tells Betty that she didn’t believe she’d be able to find “lasting love” on Elsewhere, given the time constraints associated with aging in reverse. However, as he observes a moment later, this problem is not unique to Elsewhere; love on Earth is equally transient, given the inevitability of death. Part of what Liz and other characters in the novel ultimately come to realize is that love doesn’t need to be “lasting” to be worthwhile—that even a love that fades, or that transforms into a different kind of love, can still be a powerful and transformative experience. In context, the passage also hints at Curtis’s infatuation with Betty and foreshadows the pair’s eventual relationship.  

“[S]he peels away more of the cloth until she is naked as the day she was born.

[…]

Liz swims and swims and swims, always keeping the silver moon in sight. And the gondola grows larger and larger. And the rest of the watch seems to disappear. And Liz finally reaches the surface, gasping for air, gasping for life.”

Because of water’s cleansing properties and the fact that babies develop in the water-like environment of the womb, water is often associated with birth and rebirth in literature. This association is particularly strong in Zevin’s novel, where Liz gets a second lease on life in Elsewhere after being wrapped in swaddling clothes and then emerging naked from the ocean. It is also significant that the sight of what Liz takes to be her pocket watch guides her back to the ocean’s surface; among other things, the watch is a symbol of love, which in this instance has the power to restore Liz to “life” after her death-like experience on the sea floor.

“Ah well, Liz thinks to herself. The watch isn’t exactly like the old one, or anything like it, for that matter. But the intention is good.” 

Liz’s lost pocket watch is an important symbol throughout the novel, functioning first and foremost as a reminder of time’s passage and the consequent importance of embracing life in the moment. This is precisely what Liz does in this passage, letting go of her desire to recover her old watch and appreciating the new one that Owen has given her. Relatedly, the replacement watch is another way in which Zevin explores the distinction between loss and change; although Liz says the new watch isn’t “anything like” the old one, it serves a similar (if not identical) symbolic role in her life. The passage that follows underscores the similarities, describing the watch as making a “pleasing bell-like" sound when Liz shakes her wrist (235)—a phrase that repeats almost verbatim her earlier description of her pocket watch’s ticking. 

“Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that’s not how it works. A human’s life is a beautiful mess.” 

The above passage summarizes the novel’s depiction of the nature of human existence. Zevin suggests that it’s human nature to want to pick and choose every aspect of our lives—or, in the case of Elsewhere, to pick and choose from amongst our many lives. In the end, however, these efforts are bound to end in disappointment, because our lives are so often unpredictable and uncontrollable. Rather, the novel suggests that we ought to accept our lives for the “beautiful messes” that they are, finding happiness where it exists even if it doesn’t look like what we’d imagined or hoped.

“On Elsewhere, we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be.” 

In her farewell toast to Liz, Betty alludes to one of the central questions Elsewhere poses: whether and how it’s possible to lead a fulfilling life when much of that life seems foreordained. Shortly after arriving in Elsewhere, Liz notes that one of the things she misses most about Earth is “The Feeling that Something Good Might be Right around the Corner” (153)—that is, a sense that her future had yet to be written, and that she herself could play a part in writing it. Initially, Liz sees existence on Elsewhere as incompatible with this sense of free will and possibility; because she knows the nature and timing of the physical changes she will experience as she ages backwards, she believes she knows exactly how the rest of her life will play out. However, as Betty notes, this belief is misguided; there are still many new and rewarding experiences to be had on Elsewhere, provided a person is open to them.