In Gabrielle Zevin's inventive and intelligent new novel ELSEWHERE, the afterlife is portrayed as a place where its inhabitants age in reverse until they reach infancy and are then sent back to Earth and reborn. Teenreads.com contributing writer Carolyn Juris talked to Zevin about the significance of and inspiration behind this idea, as well as her reasons for choosing to gear the book towards a young adult audience. She also reflects on her own thoughts concerning the afterlife, the wisdom of our canine counterparts, and her dream cast if the novel was ever made into a movie.

Teenreads.com: In ELSEWHERE, you conjure a vivid picture of life after death. Do you believe in an afterlife, and if so, does it resemble Elsewhere at all?

Gabrielle Zevin: Well, there's probably a very long answer to that question, but in the interest of time and space, I'll give my short one. While I certainly hope there's something after the end, the only life I know of for certain is this one. It goes without saying that, having never been there, I have no real idea what the afterlife might look like. It would certainly be an enormous coincidence and surprise to me if it ended up looking at all like Elsewhere. For me, ELSEWHERE was never really about the afterlife anyway; rather, the next life was a way for me to discuss the big things about this one.

TRC: Your main character, Liz, dies on the cusp of turning 16. When she arrives in Elsewhere and learns that she is going to age backward until she is reborn or "released," one of her initial concerns is that she'll never turn 16 and get her driver's license. What else do you associate with turning 16, and why did you choose to place Liz on the brink of that age as opposed to another milestone age, such as 13 or 18?

GZ: I was 25 going on 26 years old when I started writing ELSEWHERE, so I think I was sort of reflecting on my own life 10 years earlier. I also think that 15 going on 16 is a really interesting time for people --- you are biologically an adult (and in some cases, emotionally an adult as well) and yet, you are usually still living at home and treated like a child. I remember feeling incredibly impatient at 16 --- I was in such a rush to leave home and meet new people and try everything and just get on with the business of being an adult. A lot like Liz, though only in these respects and minus the dead part, of course! At 18, most of us are out of the house and legally adults, and at 13, we have too much time left in the house, I suppose. I needed Liz to be on the cusp of adulthood, but not truly an adult. I knew that backward aging would mean the most to a character who had never really been old, but who was old enough to know very specifically what she was missing.

TRC: Liz forms a significant attachment with Owen, who died 10 years earlier. Although he appears only a couple of years older because of Elsewhere's reverse-aging process, in reality he has 20 more years of life (and after-life) experience than she does. Do you think chronological age is less important in relationships compared with emotional age?

GZ: Actually, I think that both are important. But once a person is truly a grown-up, emotional age is probably a more important factor in a relationship's success. I believe that love is all around us, and it sometimes manifests itself in inconvenient ways and at inconvenient times. With Liz and Owen, more than being the same biological age, I think it's more about them being in the same place.

TRC: When residents of Elsewhere speak of the backwards-aging and rebirth process, their language mimics the way we discuss aging and death. For example, when Liz releases her dog, Sadie, she says "Sadie hadn't been Sadie for a while, and I knew this would happen eventually." Was discussing the process in these terms a conscious decision on your part, or was dialogue like this a natural outgrowth of the Elsewhere conceit?

GZ: Again, it was both. It was a conscious decision that was also a natural outgrowth, if that makes any sense. Once Liz gets to Elsewhere, she's not really dead anymore. She's alive, but everyone in her old "life" is dead. So, Elsewhere's language had to reflect the language of our own world. I always wanted Elsewhere to be as much like Earth as possible, so that the story would be emotional to readers who had never been to Elsewhere --- which, of course, includes everybody! That's why most everything readers find on Elsewhere, they can also find on Earth.

TRC: Sadie is one of several dogs who play prominent roles in ELSEWHERE, and many residents of Elsewhere are able to speak canine, the dogs' language. In your acknowledgments, you thank your pug, Mrs. DeWinter, "who tries to teach [you] the language of dogs every day." What do you think we could learn from dogs, if we could understand their speech?

GZ: Dogs are better at being happy than us. And I don't think it is because they are simpler than us either. Despite the fact that they lack words, I think dogs are more expressive than we are in countless ways --- it is easier for them to show love, for instance. It is easier for them to be forgiving. It is harder for them to be duplicitous. On the other hand, my own dog seems to have no understanding of dancing --- in fact, it seems to make her very suspicious.

TRC: On her way to Elsewhere, Liz meets Curtis Jest, the lead singer of her favorite band. Once there, she meets the grandmother who died before she was born. Who would you like to meet in the afterlife, assuming you're both there at the same time?

GZ: My dad's father died of lung cancer before I was born, so I would love to meet my grandfather. And I'd love to be reunited with my dog, since in all likelihood, she will die before me.

TRC: People in Elsewhere have professions, but often in different fields from the ones they worked in when they were alive (John Lennon has become a gardener, and Marilyn Monroe, a therapist). If you were to go to Elsewhere tomorrow, would you want to continue to write or is there another line of work that interests you?

GZ: I think it would be great to be a chef or a librarian or a teacher or a veterinarian or an auctioneer or an architect, but if I died tomorrow, I'd probably still be a writer. One of the best things about being a writer actually is that you get to vicariously experience many different professions. On the other hand, I can't say for certain that I'll be a professional writer forever --- we never know what will happen, and this allows for the possibility for us to be many different things in a lifetime.

TRC: Your previous book, MARGARETTOWN, is an adult novel. When you were writing ELSEWHERE, had you set out to write a young adult novel or did it evolve that way?

GZ: I wasn't sure, not at the beginning. I only set out to write a book that would entertain me and my boyfriend and maybe my parents, too. I didn't think of it as a YA novel, but I do notice that some of the most interesting books about grief and death happen to be YA's or children's --- like one of my personal favorites, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, or BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA, or even HARRY POTTER. Looking back though, I think the conceit of the book might have been pulling me toward the YA audience all along. As it happens, I wrote ELSEWHERE first, though MARGARETTOWN published first --- this has been a strange, sort of backwards experience in and of itself.

TRC: A movie for which you wrote the screenplay, Conversations With Other Women, recently premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. Could you see ELSEWHERE being turned into a movie, and if so, do you have any actors in mind for Liz, Owen or any of the other characters?

GZ: Yes, I could! However, I suspect that Liz probably will be played by a wonderful unknown actress (or a series of progressively younger unknown actresses). Actually, Helena Bonham Carter (from Fight Club and Big Fish) was in the movie I wrote, Conversations With Other Women, and I'd love for her to be Owen's wife, Emily. And I always imagine Jonathan Rhys Myers or maybe Colin Farrell as Curtis Jest, though in all honesty, one learns not to be too invested in the idea of any particular actor in any particular part. As previously mentioned, I am the owner of a certain pug dog who would be absolutely perfect for the role of Lucy.

TRC: What are you working on now? Do you have plans for another novel, or screenplay, or something entirely different?

GZ: Well, one of my screenplays, Vamp, which is a love story about a girl vampire, looks likely to shoot soon, though one never knows about these things until they actually happen. And I'm writing another book, or two. And I'm planning to make a series of snow globes for some of my friends and family. And a lot of dog-walking. And I'd like to come up with something clever and meaningful and useful to help the people in Louisiana, though I don't know exactly what that is yet.

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