Thirteen Reasons Why has two narrators. The first, Clay Jensen, is a teenage boy who finds himself in possession of a package of seven mysterious audiotapes. Listening to the first tape reveals them to be recorded messages from the second narrator: Hannah Baker, a classmate that Clay knew and liked, but had committed suicide a few weeks prior. The tapes turn out to be Hannah’s last message to thirteen people she claims were in some way responsible for her death; each side of the tapes holds an anecdote about a single person, all of which connect into a series of events that took Hannah to her fateful decision. Following a map that had been surreptitiously placed in his locker, Clay follows in Hannah’s footsteps as she traces the stories across the various landmarks of their small town, listening to each tape and dreading the moment when his name will appear. As the various threads of Hannah’s story come together through the tapes, Clay must come to terms with his own feelings about what happened to Hannah and the repercussions of why it happened.
Stylistically, this book is pitch-perfect. The format is unique without being gimmicky, and is fine-tuned with a perfect amount of suspense. I found myself walking along with Clay, trapped in the thrall of the tapes and waiting with curiosity and apprehension for the next one. When I wasn’t reading the book, I was thinking about it, processing the previous chapters and anticipating the forthcoming ones. The story is compelling enough to keep readers turning pages, with no stumbling blocks in the narrative and no extraneous plot elements.
Regarding the content itself, it’s fairly obvious at first glance that the story is dark and heavy. But Asher handles the complexities inherent to a story about suicide (specifically, attempting to explain suicide) masterfully. I read a couple of other reader reviews, and was dumbfounded at how many people commented on how they didn’t buy the depiction of Hannah Baker, or didn’t agree with how Asher wrote her particular reasons for what she did. I was especially astounded by some reviewers who claimed experience with suicide attempts, and blasted her motivations as “unrealistic.” I didn’t know that there was such a thing, outside of some extreme exceptions, as a “realistic” motivation for ending one’s own life. Generally speaking, a friend or loved one’s suicide is fraught with mysterious motives, and when reasons come to light, they never justify or even explain why that person would do something so drastic.
The anger, though, I do understand. I was occasionally angry with Hannah Baker, in the way I would be angry with a real person for killing themselves. I’ll even confess to having an internal ideological war. Hannah’s tapes are calm, collected, and focused. They are full of dark humor, and of pointed accusation. They depict a teen who knew what she was doing, and knew the impact it would have on the people who listened to the tapes. The parent part of my psyche spent some time wagging its finger at the librarian part, insisting (with some logical cause) that this book paints a somewhat glamorous picture of a suicide victim using her death to exact revenge on her perceived tormentors, which is not the healthiest message to send.
However, I can say with some confidence that that’s ultimately not what gives this book its emotional power. Yes, the tapes have their share of graveyard humor and practiced vengeance, which gives the story a lot of its readability. But revenge isn’t the point of the tapes. I was fortunate enough to meet Jay Asher and get my copy of this book signed, and with his autograph he penned a key phrase from one of Hannah’s tapes: “Everything affects everything.” That, I feel, is the central theme of this book. As Clay makes his way through the tapes, Hannah makes it perfectly clear that the decision to kill herself was hers alone, and came from her “giving up,” not from any one person or event pushing her to it. As the various events recorded on the tapes come together to form a connected story, Clay is made privy to how each small thing affects other small things in her life, creating ripples that cascaded into unintended consequences. Everything affects everything. The story becomes less about explaining why a teenage girl might commit suicide (which will never resonate as “realistic” or “good enough,” honestly), and more about examining how we treat others in light of the fact that we can never know what someone is going through at any particular time, and how we might be helping or hurting without intending to or even thinking about it. This theme has interesting applications all throughout the story, from the sweet and tidy ending to the implied-but-unexplored effects that the tapes might have on the other people on Hannah’s list. I suppose I could construct a lot of interesting arguments about why other people (fictional or otherwise) who go through the same things or worse are often able to cope just fine, but that’s not really the point. In another story, maybe everything affects everything in different ways. Who knows.
Though, I do find it ironic that the common complaint with the book seems to be that many readers can’t sympathize with Hannah because they don’t really know anything about her other than her suicidal thoughts, don’t think that the common high school problems depicted are worth the melodramatic result, and aren’t satisfied with only hearing her side of the story. Guys? There is a scene in the book that deals specifically with that (the peer communications class), and according to the author’s afterword, it was drawn from a real-life incident. Just saying. I realize that it’s easy to dismiss Hannah’s story as “childish” and “unbelievable” due to it being fictional, but I interacted with more than one suicidal friend in my teen years. It was believable to me. Petty problems never seem petty to the person who has to deal with them, and in case you’ve forgotten what being a teenager is like, there is no such thing as a petty problem to someone who is often experiencing powerful emotions and complicated interpersonal interactions for the first time, without the life experience and biological capacity to see things with a longer view. To be fair, though, Hannah’s tapes do smack a little bit of self-righteousness (another reminder: teenager!), and it is easy to get caught up in this being a story about suicide instead of a story about how callously people can treat other people, due to them thinking such treatment isn’t that big of a deal.
Anyway, that’s a lot of philosophizing on a fairly simple idea. Wheaton’s Law: don’t be a dick. Frankly, though, you don’t need to have any aspirations toward deep self-reflection to enjoy this book. It has believable and achingly sympathetic characters, an engaging premise, and wonderful execution. The tone and content is perfect for older teens, while the format and suspenseful pace is the equal of any adult thriller. And I’m confident that even readers who don’t like the book will think about the story and the themes it conveys long after they finish it. I’m wary of what will happen once Hollywood finishes wrapping its flailing appendages around this story, but the book has my recommendation for anyone and everyone, with absolutely no reservations.
Verdict: 5 / 5
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