Thirteen Reasons Why

I have been on a Middle Grade /Young Adult novel kick for a while now, beginning with the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, which I read to forget I ever read Twilight (sorry fans). It continued with Kate DiCamillo’s Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and Cornelia Funke’s Igraine the Brave. I have read a bunch of Sharon Creech novels. Love that Dog. Hate That Cat. Granny Torelli Makes Soup. I actually read this one to my kids; it’s beautiful. In one part, Creech writes “Grandma’s eyes shine with tears” and I just pointed to my own to explain it to them. Walk Two Moons – how did I go so long without reading this book, the Newberry winner? Like the previous Kate DiCamillo post, there is really not a book here that would disappoint you. I am in the midst of When you Reach Me, which is intriguing so far. I think I could read at least three books a week if they were YA, but I will try to be a grownup next time, and attack the large and growing pile of yet-to-be-read books in my house.

But first let me tell you about Jay Asher’s debut novel Thirteen Reasons Why. This is a book I wish I had read freshman year of high school. It may have changed the way I looked at people; it may have helped me be a better person.

Hannah Baker has already committed suicide when the story begins, and her friends are left with this – a shoebox full of cassette tapes she made, that they must listen to and pass along. The author says in an afterward that he specifically chose cassettes since they would already be dated, as opposed to a CD that is current now but will date the story later and distract from the plot. Receiving the package is not a gift – there are thirteen painful sides to listen to, and, if you got them, you are one of the thirteen reasons Hannah is dead.

You listen to the tapes along with Clay, who gets them pretty late in the game, and cannot imagine why he is implicated. He has always had a crush on Hannah, and he is one of the few people to be devastated by her death.

The conceit the author uses to move the tapes along is the threat that there is an identical set that will be released to the public if someone breaks the chain. For some people, this will cause humiliation, shame, and even legal troubles. I found this device intriguing, though I didn’t really think it was necessary. The person Hannah chose to insure the tapes move along was an interesting character, but I could have done without the storyline. It was fascinating to read how seemingly little things could cause and effect a much larger problem. In Hannah’s words, the “snowball effect”.

The rest of the story develops in tandem – we hear Hannah’s voice as Clay hears it, but we also have the benefit of his reaction, which is sometimes agreement and sometimes clarification. The differences in their reconstructions of the same events allow you to intimately see how a person’s perspective can become skewed.

It is a frustrating book; you can only imagine how devastating it would be to know that if you could have taken back a silly comment or a stupid teenage act, things could be different. Suicide is a tricky subject. Tons of books about it, clinically speaking, yet it’s still taboo. I was a little bit jealous of these thirteen kids; despite the sorrows they would suffer, they ultimately knew why she took her life. And, I should also mention, she does not fully blame them. She does admit it is her choice in the end, or else you would be left with the huge unfairness that most of the kids, while they behaved irresponsibly, were just acting like normal teenagers – mean, insensitive and sometimes selfish. Which made me realize how we all behave that way at some point or other, and how lucky we are that people don’t always take it the wrong way.

As an adult, this is the first book I have read in a very long time that made me forget I am a parent, and brought back so clearly all of the angst of being a teenager. It was not necessarily a great place to be, but, as they say, it was better than the alternative.