Book Talk: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Sum it up: A few days after Clay’s crush Hannah Baker commits suicide, a box shows up on his doorstep. Inside are a set of cassettes, and on those tapes–if he’s brave enough to listen–Hannah is going to tell him, and the other thirteen people responsible, why she committed suicide.

Thoughts: So, here’s the thing: I know, the description sounds like the novel version of a “very special episode” from in all the glory of 90′s TV show. But it’s not that. It is a book about social issues, and in some ways you can feel that Asher wants to educate you about these things, but it comes across as very real, honest, and at its heart it’s a book about the characters.

It would be so easy to over dramatize this book, to make it about one, singular inciting incident that led Hannah to her choice. Asher wisely avoids that path and instead does something that feels much more plausible, like the kind of thing that could happen every day.

Asher takes seemingly small incidents in life–a lie about a first kiss, something said in passing, and he shows the way they can snowball and effect people in ways we’d never dreamed. Especially young people, who maybe haven’t quite finished defining themselves on their own terms yet and now have to contend with all this outside noise. As Asher describes it, it slowly takes away Anna’s sense of self, and it’s not just one thing that does it, it’s a million (well, 13) small things that give an example of how powerful words are, even when we don’t necessarily mean to give them that much power.

It’s a good book. A book that people should read, because I think it bridges the gap between helping to understand and telling a good story. There are a few foibles here and there, I think–parts that maybe run on a little long, but none of it effects the overall shape of the book in any way.

Hannah Baker is dead. We know this almost before the novel even begins, so it begs the question: as a story, why should we care? And the answer: Because Hannah didn’t have to die.

If you liked this book: Okay, you may need to bear with me a little here, because the book I want to suggest (A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness) is not really that similar. It’s a middle grade book, for starters, and it’s a book about a young boy dealing with cancer (his mother’s cancer.) It’s also a kind of fantasy book (there’s a monster!)–but, but, it has a lot of the same heart. It’s another book that will help you see some of the issues kids face in a new light, all while telling a really compelling story.