Elsewhere Summary & Study Guide Description

Elsewhere Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:
This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin.
Elsewhere is a novel by Gabrielle Zevin. In this novel, Lizzie has been killed in a hit and run accident. When she wakes on a boat, she thinks that she is dreaming. However, as Lizzie comes to understand the truth, she finds herself fighting reality and breaking the rules to get back to her family. Elsewhere is a fascinating story of what happens to people after death.
Lizzie has died in a hit and run accident on her way to the mall. Only fifteen, Lizzie wakes on a boat and holds on to the idea that she is only dreaming because she cannot imagine dying so young. However, when Lizzie is allowed to watch her own funeral, she is forced to realize the truth. When the boat docks, Lizzie refuses to disembark in hopes that she can return with the boat to her previous life.
On Elsewhere, Lizzie is met by her grandmother, Betty, who died in the months before Lizzie was born. Betty explains to Lizzie that on Elsewhere, people age backwards. Betty was in her fifties when she died, but is now in her thirties. Lizzie becomes angry at this thought because she had so looked forward to turning sixteen, but now she never will.
On her first full day on Elsewhere, Lizzie attends her acclimation meeting, a meeting with a counselor in which Lizzie learns about Elsewhere and is assigned an avocation. Lizzie's counselor, Aldous, suggests that Lizzie work as a counselor with newly arrived animals, but Lizzie hesitates at the offer.
Lizzie begins spending all her time at an observation deck on a lighthouse near her grandmother's house. From the telescopes on the observation deck, Lizzie can watch her family and friends back on earth. Lizzie becomes obsessed with watching over the next few weeks. Lizzie...