Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher

The Story: The narrator of this book is a teenage boy named Clay.  He gets home from school one day to find a package.  Turns out, it’s full of tapes from a girl named Hannah who had killed herself just last week.  As the tapes begin, she says that anyone who has received them in some way contributed to her killing herself.  The tapes are her chance to tell why she did it and how they are all involved.

She provides a map of places around their town that are influential in her life and in the story she’s telling, so Clay gets a walkman and starts traveling to these different places, all the while listening to the tapes.

The reasons that Hannah spell out are kind of this snowball effect.  There was an initial wrong when she moved to town and it just kind of spiraled, in her eyes, until it was unfixable.  Clay is intrigued and horrified.  Throughout the book, as Hannah’s “voice” tells her story, Clay’s thoughts are also spelled out for the reader.

The reader knows going into the story that in the end, Hannah kills herself.  Somehow there is still quite a bit of suspense here, finding out how each person was involved and how it all ties together in the end.

What I Thought: This book was absolutely gut wrenching.  Just last summer, my teenage cousin committed suicide.  She wasn’t this outwardly depressed kid.  While she probably exhibited warning signs, they were mostly noticed in retrospect.  While she had searched for help, no one had any idea that the situation was as extreme as it obviously was.  I thought a lot about teen suicide in the following months and about how teenager’s brain just doesn’t react the way that an adult’s brain does.  I thought a lot about how no one had any idea what that “final straw” was for Kristi or what could have led her down such a horrible path.  At the funeral, I heard a lot of grieving people talk about how “I had no idea.” “If I had only….”

I knew about this book then but I’m glad that I waited for my brain to clear to read this.  As an adult reading this book, I was blown away that the series of events that she described was enough to make her not want to live.  But then I started thinking about that “snowball” and how all of these things grouped together, and then viewed through a teenager’s lens may just be enough to do it.  It makes my stomach turn over.

The heart behind this book really was that every little wrong that we do can be taken as something huge to the person we are wronging.  Kids are mean.  Teenagers are worse.  It makes me blush to think of the downright horrible things that I said or did to people as a kid and as a teen.  I think that the motive that Jay Asher had while writing this was to make his teenage readers think all of this through.

What a powerful book.  I think that in high schools, this book should be stacked in the guidance office and handed to every kid that walks through the door.  It is that important.

I think that  this is an important book for adults as well.  In the end, all Hannah wanted was someone to listen, for an adult to tell her how to deal with all of these issues that she was dealing with.  Not to give away part of the ending, but she gives one adult just that chance… and he kind of makes jokes and offers up cliche advice that meant absolutely nothing.  It was at this point that Hannah made the decision to end her own life.  That is a weighty thought, but it’s true and real and something that we need to be aware of.

Conclusion: If you are a teen, were a teen, or know teens I think that this book and the ideas it presents should be read and taken to heart.  Heavy, hard stuff to read but so, so important.