Elsewhere, Gabrielle Zevin
I vaguely remembered being recommended Zevin’s other book, Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow (her first adult fiction book, I believe) and picked up both that one and Elsewhere when I was in Indonesia, without realizing that Elsewhere was YA fiction. Obviously I’m not opposed to YA fiction (hello my biannual Twilight reread!), but it’s not something I normally read, mainly because I am no longer a young adult (lol). That being said, the plot of Elsewhere sounded unique: a girl who dies in an accident goes to a place called ‘Elsewhere’— presumably heaven, but not how anyone is taught to imagine it. Here, everyone ages backwards until they are babies again and ready to begin a new life. The protagonist, 15-year-old Liz, spends the book not only learning to acclimate to her new “life,” but also learning the life lessons she missed out on while she was alive. As someone who does not believe in religion and lacks any specific belief about the afterlife, it would be comforting to know that something like the world Nevin has imagined exists.
Either/Or, Elif Batuman
I picked up a copy of this book at the Jakarta airport not realizing it was actually the second, following Batuman’s The Idiot, which was about a college freshman named Selin who is the first in her family to go to Harvard. Either/Or follows her second year at Harvard, and though I started the book without knowledge of The Idiot, I did not feel I was missing anything at all; the narrative blends Selin’s past with her present in such a fluid way and with such insightful yet funny commentaries from Selin that even after I found out it was the second book, I still immensely enjoyed it. Selin wonders why things are the way they are and her keen and shrewd observations had me chuckling out loud again and again as I read about her life at university. For example, on gender roles and why men always seemed to be the ‘great’ writers she was studying: “Why was he a writer, and they weren’t, when they cared about the same things?” or this introspection after thinking about why European or American culture deemed what was ‘important’ and how untrue it was: “A daunting thought: How would I eventually root out from my mind all the beliefs that I hated?” And finally, Batuman’s attempt at irony as Selin declares: “I wanted to write a book about the interpersonal relations and the human condition,” as if Batuman herself hadn’t just done that, probably twice if we are to include The Idiot (which I do plan to read as soon as possible!).