Here’s my book review of Thirteen Reasons Why, a novel by Jay Asher.
Thirteen Reasons Why is the fictional story behind a teenage suicide. It has two first-person narrators – Hannah Baker, the girl who decided to end her own life, and Clay Jensen, who presumably was one of the thirteen 13 motivations for her tragic choice. Clay comes into possession of a box of audiocassette tapes – an outdated format in this age of mp3 – but it’s relatively secure because the analog recordings can’t be copied as easily and shared at a click with your thousand closest friends on Facebook.
Hannah dictated the tapes to tell the story behind her decision to end her life in an odd – and you could well say pointless – act of revenge. She has devised a routing plan so that each of the people who wronged her will be forced to listen. And she has included a scheme to betray their guilty secrets if any one of them goes public with the information – or doesn’t keep this audio chain-letter moving from one perpetrator to the last – at which point the tapes must be destroyed.
Hannah’s story unfolds to us (the readers), as Clay plays the tapes in sequence for himself. All along he’s wondering about – and dreading – what role he had in, and what responsibility he might hold for, her death.
What’s striking to me as a mature adult – mature, at least in years – is how mundane and relatively innocuous these slights seem. I don’t think there’s much here that would cause an adult to take the high jump to oblivion. There’s bullying of various kinds, sexual and emotional abuse by young men, along with snubs and betrayals by her female peers. Hannah seems to fear she’s an ugly duckling. But she’s hardly thinking that the boys seem drawn to her by her sheer attractiveness. She doesn’t provoke their advances, and for the most part, she doesn’t give into them.
There is an incident of date rape, but Hannah is not its victim. She’s a witness, and she blames herself for its happening. But it’s not necessarily one of the reasons she decides to end it all. I’m not sure why she does. In the world of adults, traumas like divorce, job loss, financial insolvency terminal illness, and death can trigger severe emotional breakdowns. But there’s none of that in Hannah’s background. In general, cruel gossip can be a destroyer of egos, but not the basic will to live.
I’ve heard it said that deep despair is the result – not of losing happiness – but losing the hope of ever having any happiness. And I suppose that’s what destroys Hannah.
I won’t insert the spoiler here of how Clay was or wasn’t involved. But I wonder about novelist Jay Asher. This was his first fiction book, and some would say he hit the ball out of the park. The book and the audio book have been bestsellers. It’s won all kinds of awards, and it’s been made into a cable series on Netflix. So he knows how to tell a story, one that engages the angst of tweens and teens. I’m no mental health expert, but I don’t think Jay Asher’s understanding of clinical depression or suicide is particularly deep. He said in interviews that he had a close relative who considered suicide but survived. If any of his young readers think Hannah’s are compelling reasons to just give up, I think that’s more than a shame.
Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. A great “beach read” even if you won’t actually be camped out on the shore.
