Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

May 15th, 2008 at 1:20pm |

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Audience: High School (mature content)

Rating: A

Synopsis:

Clay comes home from high school one day and finds a package waiting for him. Inside the box are 13 tapes. When he plays the first one, he is shocked to hear the voice of Hannah Baker, his crush and classmate who had committed suicide a few weeks earlier. Even more disconcerting are Hannah’s words: she committed suicide because of 13 people… the same 13 people who will receive the tapes in the mail. Clay doesn’t know what he could have done to make Hannah suicidal, but once he listens and learns, his life will never be the same again.

If you can, get the audio recording and listen to this book. Hearing Hannah’s words out loud makes it feel like you are listening to the tapes right along with Clay. An eerie experience, but one I highly recommend!

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) Wow! This is a very powerful, very gripping book. It is possibly the hardest-to-put-down book I’ve read this year… and you guys know that I read a lot. The characters were all very real, both Hannah and Clay had unique voices and I felt for both of them as they shared their anguish.

Listening to Clay protest his innocence, but at the same time worrying that his action must be rather egregious (he hints at this with the size of rock Marcus gave him and all the comments about Hannah yelling at the party) was so intriguing. I was so relieved for him when Hannah first shares that he did NOT do anything to belong on the tapes. This book would have been completely different if the narrator was someone the reader disliked or blamed. But at the same time, I feel the worst for Clay because he would have helped her, and wanted to help her, but Hannah didn’t let him. He is the one that can walk away from the tapes feeling more or less blameless, but I also feel like he’s the one who will be most affected by Hannah’s words and pain.

Early in the story Hannah refers to ‘old rumors,’ saying that she and hoped she’d left them behind when she moved. It was just one quick line and she never brought it up again, but it made me wonder if part of the reason Hannah was so impacted by these rumors was because she had experienced them before.

I really liked the ending of this book. Clay’s recognition that Sky was similar to Hannah and that he’d overlooked her in the past was powerful. But more powerful was when he flipped the last tape over and Hannah breathed out a ‘thank you.’ I’d like to believe that Hannah was thanking the people for caring enough to want more… that they cared enough to flip the tape over, keep listening, and hope there was more to her story. Or maybe she was just thanking them for finishing all of the tapes.