Kearsten's Book Club: Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

On Monday, February 27th, Kearsten's Book Club settled in with chocolate and lemon pie to discuss Gabrielle Zevin's teen book, Elsewhere.

"After fifteen-year-old Liz Hall is hit by a taxi and killed, she finds herself in a place that is both like and unlike Earth, where she must adjust to her new status and figure out how to 'live.'"

Our fearless Destinee led the discussion, which ranged from "If you could choose any avocation, what would it be?" to "What are you looking forward to most?" to "What on Earth did all this symbolism mean?!"

As usual, feelings about the book was mixed: while some us us enjoyed the book for it's philosophical aspects (What does it mean to have lived? Can you choose to be happy?), others found it frustrating, or even boring, due to its slower pace and lack of action.

This is definitely a quieter sort of book, one that asks its reader to wonder what it might mean to die young, and miss out on a lot of the life experiences about which adults reminisce. Is a life lived differently than what you'd expected worse somehow? Or can it be just as worth living as that 'other' life?

If you've already read Elsewhere and would like to read something similar, try some of these teen and adult titles. (I've linked to a mix of print, ebooks and audiobooks, all in the interest of getting you to summaries quickly!)

• Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• The Fault in our Stars by John Green
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
• How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
• If I Stay by Gayle Forman
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Any I missed? What did you think of the book?

We Hear the Dead

An excellent historical novel set in pre-Civil War America. This is when spiritualism was born, the time when seances and communication with the dead became a national mania. Who first started "spirit rapping?" None other than our narrator, the teenaged Maggie Fox and her younger sister, Kate.

It begins as a harmless prank: Maggie and Kate dislike the cousin who has come to live with them and are simply seeking a way to chase her off. The "otherwordly" noises they say are ghosts are really nothing more than a hoax of the Fox sisters, but before they know it, the entire community is swamping their house, eager to commune with the dearly departed spirits of their loved ones. Once it starts, Maggie and Kate can't stop it. Their fame grows, especially after their eldest sister, the shrewd Leah, arrives to push the girls' celebrity. Soon the Fox sisters are sharing parlor seances with the high-class and the famous. The money comes rolling in, but the sisters teeter on the edge of being unmasked, and the older Maggie grows, the more she questions whether her deceptions truly give comfort to the bereaved or cruelly deceive the innocent at their most vulnerable. Maggie knows the spirit rapping is a farce, but Kate begins to believe she truly has the gift of second sight. When Maggie meets a man and falls in love, her chosen profession becomes a bitter obstacle. Maggie's "celebrity" is good parts notoriety, and may well cost her the person she loves most.

So well-written! This novel really feels like it's come from the time period it represents. The narrator's style of speaking is so smooth and dead on (no pun intended) that the book feels deliciously authentic (aside from a few misuses of "lay" where the word "lie" should have gone--this grammatical error is a product of our current generation, not the pre-Civil war generation.) I loved reading this, and the ups and downs of the Fox sisters kept me turning the pages. What an impressive debut for a YA writer. I look forward to more of Diane K. Salerni's work.

If you enjoy this period of history like I do, I can suggest a few other titles about spiritism. Give The Spiritualist by Megan Chance a read, and enjoy the pure brilliance of Sarah Waters's Affinity. Note: These two titles were published for adults rather than teens.

Before I Fall

"I'm dead, but I can't stop living."

This is the nightmare in which Samantha Kingston finds herself in Lauren Oliver's stunning debut novel, Before I Fall. Popular, pretty Samantha, one of the golden crowd, the girl with the boyfriend everyone desires, the girl with the friends everyone wishes to have, the girl with everything, dies in a car crash after a party. It was the night Samanatha was to lose her virginity. Instead, drunk and coming from an outrageous social scene--the school's freak showed up to insult the four most popular girls in school, and was then publicly humiliated in return--Sam's best friend, Linsday, swerves off the road, the car flips over, and Samantha dies. . .

. . . only to wake up to the sound of her alarm and repeat the day of the party--the day of her death--over and over again. Is this the afterlife? Is Samantha caught in limbo? All she knows is that the day begins anew, giving her multiple chances to change the outcome of one tragic night. As her days repeat, Sam learns intimate secrets of her friends and loved ones, as well as the social misfits she and her closest pals have spent years tormenting. Her boyfriend is not the perfect specimen he once seemed; a guy who's been carrying a torch for her emerges as a potential hero. And all the while, Sam is dead, or will be--again--if she can't find some way to make things right.

This is a moving book, one that will leave the reader contemplating it long after the last page is turned. I can't recommend it enough.

Heck Where the Bad Kids Go

A very interesting premise. Where indeed do bad kids go? Basye describes a dimension that would make any kid think twice about living a life that would guarantee winding up in Heck.

Marlo and Milton Fauster die in a horrible marshmellow bear explosion. Marlo is the bad seed and poor Milton winds up as collateral damage. There is the Bea "Elsa" Bubb who runs Heck and is the nightmare principal figure and just about every horrible thing that anyone could think of, like the only food in the cafeterium is spoiled vegetables. Ethics class is taught by Richard Nixon and Home Ec is taught by Lizzie Borden. There are other "wonderful" teachers. Showers run muddy water, woven hair pajamas are worn to bed and everything is filthy. Gross, gross, really gross!

It was kind of an overload situation on the descriptions for me. I think the readers would probably enjoy reading the various descriptions of Heck. I had to admire the spunk of Marlo, Milton and Milton's new friend Virgil in their relentless quest to escape. They do not give up. But will they be able to escape? It was funny and it will be interesting to read the sequel coming out in July 2009, Rapacia.