Gabrielle Zevin
My sister lent me this paperback during our recent holiday in Ripon, and I finished it on our last night there.
It is a Young Adult novel in the genre “Magic Realism” (according to wikipedia), but although my own Young Adult time was decades ago, I enjoyed the book very much.
The idea behind the story is that people who die are neither here nor there, but elsewhere.
And “Elsewhere” is indeed the place where 15-year-old Liz lands after she dies in a hit and run accident while cycling to the mall, where she was supposed to meet her best friend to help choose her prom dress.
Although Liz makes a friend during the passage on the ship to Elsewhere, and upon arrival meets her grandmother (who died before she was born), and Elsewhere doesn’t seem a bad place at all, she longs for her life back on Earth.
As a teenager, she still had so much ahead and so much to look forward to, and she can not accept that she’ll never be 16, never will have a driving license, graduate from High School, go to college, move out from home and generally do all the things on does as one is growing up.
Will she come to terms with her new “life”?
There was a lot in this book to like. Most of the characters are like real people, their thoughts and actions plausible. I guess my favourites were Betty, Liz’s grandmother, and the dog she adopts (yes, pets go Elsewhere, too, when they die).
I wasn’t quite in agreement with the ending, but that’s just my personal taste, I suppose.
It was my first read by this author. My sister has more, and I might borrow them from her, too. Clicking on word "wikipedia" above takes you to the entry about the book, which of course links to an entry about the author, which I knew nothing about until reading up on her.
I've read 2 of her books and remember enjoying them. "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" and "The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry"
ReplyDeleteI think my sister has those, and I will borrow them from her when I'm through with my current TBR pile (still quite a few there).
DeleteTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow ( I added the Oxford comma ) is in
ReplyDeleteWaterstones ; I remember the cover art.
As small children, we were encouraged to pray for people who die suddenly.
It's likely that people who've had fortunate lives miss their time on Earth.
* The Lovely Bones * : the film was more than I could bear ; never read the novel.
Greg Bellow said his father was obsessed with survival after death.
* Saul Bellow's Heart : A Son's Memoir * . Greg was a psychoanalyst.
Yet Bellow never returned to synagogue and the faith of his fathers.
I like Gabrielle Zevin's cursive signature (online).
The Atlantic had an essay last year on college students who can't write by hand.
* The Missing Ink * by Philip Hensher (paperback) promotes writing by hand.
YouTube has videos of young people who keep beautiful journals, illustrating them
with drawings, dried flowers, leaves, cut-outs, photos, & copper handwriting.
In Grundschule (elementary school), we had weekly lessons of Schönschreiben (literally "beautiful writing". I loved these lessons even though I was never really good at it, and over the years my handwriting has gotten worse, not improved. I love receiving handwritten cards and letters and make a heroic effort every year to send Christmas cards to family and friends, but no matter how hard I try, I find that my thoughts flow too fast for my hand to keep up, and I end up with blotchy lines that are hard to decipher.
DeleteAs for keeping beautiful journals with illustrations, Alan Rickman was a prolific diary writer and illustrator. His biography contains a few facsimile pages that are wonderful, true works of art.
With a 1B Pencil I improved my hand. Just copying lines from poetry. Online help.
DeleteYour thoughts flow too fast for your hand to follow? This is how you write the blog.
Try a hand journal. There are perceptions your fast brain filtered out. Fleeting.
I asked AI :
English speech runs in a natural iambic rhythm - does German speech
have the same natural rhythm ?
Answer : No. German speech is fundamentally a trochaic language.
Iambic stress is Weak-Strong - A HEAD-ache CURED.
Trochaic stress is Strong-Weak - Kopf-Schmerz.
English da-DUM da-DUM. German DA-dum DA-dum.
German doesn't have the iambic rolling gait which becomes so dull on the ear.
Iambic is teleological - driving forward to a clear conclusion. Too clear at times.
Writing by hand alters the rhythm-control in the brain, thus altering thought.
English poets and prose writers have ways of killing the iamb.
Trochaic Inversion. Subverting the predictable iambic rise and fall of pentameter.
English sentences can be too melodious and poetic ; the writer has to radically alter the vowel sounds and stress patterns, breaking the iambic spell.
Virginia Woolf used triple-beats to mimic the chaotic, non-linear patterns of
thought.
James Kelman shatters Standard English by vowel shortening.
His use of the F word creates an acoustic wall of sound, every syllable demands
an equal share of breath.
These weighted, heavy stresses are called Trochaic Inversion. German.
'Elsewhere' is an interesting premise and rather comforting.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I thought, too.
DeleteI second (or third?) the recommendations above of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow." I enjoyed it a lot! I haven't read "Elsewhere" but we had it in our school library and I always thought it looked promising. One of these days!
ReplyDeleteI believe my sister has it. When my TBR pile starts to dwindle, I'll ask her to lend it to me. I can recommend "Elsewhere" and imagine that you'll like the dogs in the book.
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