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Shop nowElsewhere
A Novel
Narrator
Ell Potter
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Length
7 hours 55 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“This novel gripped from start to finish. Breathy and fresh, the comparisons to Atwood and Jackson are apt, but I think Schaitkin is doing something really interesting with the genre. Schaitkin maintains this incredible sense of place throughout, using lush sensorial experiences that breathe life into this imagined place. While on the surface, Elsewhere is a fantasy story about an odd affliction affecting the women of an almost magical hamlet isolated in the woods, it unspools deliciously into a deep reflection on the inherit tragedies of motherhood, belonging, family, home and of truly being known to others, and to ourselves. ”
— Charles • Malaprop's Bookstore
Bookseller recommendation
“Alexis Schaitkin's Elsewhere is an eerie, suspenseful dystopia taking place in a cloud-covered village in the mountains where an 'affliction' resides that causes mothers to mysteriously disappear. The residents of the village don't know why this happens, but solemnly accept these disappearances as the possible outcome for experiencing the beauty of motherhood. Cult-like and chilling.”
— Maxwell • Paragraphs Bookstore
Bookseller recommendation
“Beautiful and unsettling, Elsewhere is a novel I can't stop thinking about. Not usually one for dystopian fiction, I started listening and soon was captivated by this haunting, cloud-covered place and close-knit community from which women occasionally disappear. (Ell Potter's narration perfectly captures its eerie atmosphere.) The families who live here wonder about the world beyond, known only as 'Elsewhere,' especially when a stranger comes to visit. But, no matter how uncertain the future is for mothers in this place, they wouldn't consider leaving. Why, you'll wonder, as you're drawn in by the mystery of this place and its people. How deep is devotion, and much should motherhood require of a woman? I can imagine book clubs debating this one at length!”
— Lady • The Snail on the Wall
"The audiobook narrated by Ell Potter is riveting." -- Buzzfeed on Elsewhere
Richly emotive and darkly captivating, with elements of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and the imaginative depth of Margaret Atwood, Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin conjures a community in which girls become wives, wives become mothers and some of them, quite simply, disappear.
Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town, fiercely protective, brutal and unforgiving in its adherence to tradition, faces a singular affliction: some mothers vanish, disappearing into the clouds. It is the exquisite pain and intrinsic beauty of their lives; it sets them apart from people elsewhere and gives them meaning.
Vera, a young girl when her own mother went, is on the cusp of adulthood herself. As her peers begin to marry and become mothers, they speculate about who might be the first to go, each wondering about her own fate. Reveling in their gossip, they witness each other in motherhood, waiting for signs: this one devotes herself to her child too much, this one not enough—that must surely draw the affliction’s gaze. When motherhood comes for Vera, she is faced with the question: will she be able to stay and mother her beloved child, or will she disappear?
Provocative and hypnotic, Alexis Schaitkin’s Elsewhere is at once a spellbinding revelation and a rumination on the mysterious task of motherhood and all the ways in which a woman can lose herself to it; the self-monitoring and judgment, the doubts and unknowns, and the legacy she leaves behind.
A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.
Alexis Schaitkin is the author of Saint X. Her short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and their two children.