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Review: Thirteen Reasons Why
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Thirteen Reasons Why cover.
Jay Asher’s debut novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, has become a quiet bestseller, but not quiet enough that the New York Times didn’t catch on. After reading the article in the Times, I set out to find the book, wondering if it could become the “next big thing.” Maybe for once I can be ahead of the curve, although once again I will not side with the majority of readers.
Thirteen Reasons Why is the story of a Hannah Baker, a high school girl who committed suicide. I say it in past tense because when the story opens, her death has already occurred. She has made thirteen tapes on which she has recorded stories about the people who drove her to kill herself. She sends the tapes to the first person on her list and tells them they must send the tapes to the next person when they have listened to all thirteen tales. Already I am suspicious. It sounds like Asher sat down and tried to think of the most morbid and heart wrenching situation ever. The reader gets to hear the tapes from the point of view of Clay, the only character who seems to have been genuinely nice to Hannah, and, of course, while she reveals terrible secrets about every other person on the list, she only includes Clay because he is integral to how the stories tie together. He is not one of the people she blames.
This seems manipulative to me. We’re given an already tearful situation, and then we’re led through it by the one character that isn’t despicable? It’s not only contrived, it’s sensationalism at its peak. Granted, the book is purely fiction. It could be as sensationalistic as it wanted, but for a book that is clearly attempting to mirror reality, it is incredibly unrealistic. The book is playing on our emotions from the get-go, and this always puts me on edge. The story and the writing should draw out the readers’ emotions, not the horrendous situation. A good writer could write about going to the shop for milk and make it interesting; in fact I’m positive some great writers have.
Situation aside, I feel Asher is a good writer. I was fully engaged with the story, but to the point that all I could think about was why he was writing this story and not some other one. He clearly has a good imagination (it’s hard to come up with something that is the most morbid), and a wonderful talent for dialogue. Why he decided to write about high school, I’ll never know.
Another thing that gets me about this book is its topic. The market is flooded with vaguely romantic, darkly depressing, morbid stories for teens, i.e. Twilight and all the other vampire series, Tithe and its sequels, and every other vaguely fantastical teen series with a half-elf who never fits in. This book seems to be jumping on the bandwagon while trying to be different because it’s “real.” The more I read, the more I believed that Hannah was simply someone who couldn’t handle high school and didn’t know when to get help. I’m not saying this to make light of teen suicide, far from it. I think this book is an excellent Public Service Announcement and may help high schoolers more easily recognize the symptoms of the suicidal, but as far as eliciting sympathy, Hannah didn’t get any from me. I felt that more often than not she just needed a good shock back to reality by someone who was grounded, it was just unfortunate (and perhaps too convenient, hmmmm…) that everyone around her were the kind of people she was trying to get away from. The whole situation reeks of an author’s set up.
Overall, I would not recommend this book. I would toss it on the pile with all the other emo teen books that have been piling up steadily over the past ten months. I keep this pile close to the teen wizard book pile, as it happens. This book has the makings to be the “next big thing.” It’s for teens, it’s about something unbelievably depressing, and it’s easy to read. Voila, instant bestseller. If it were up to me, I’d make everyone read Water for Elephants to prove that good writing can have happy endings.
Happy Reading
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