Thirteen Reasons Why

Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher
Published by Razorbill, 2007; ISBN 1595141715
Recommended reading age: Young Adult

Summary:
Clay comes home one day to find a package on his front porch, addressed to him. Eagerly, he rips it open and finds thirteen cassette tapes. But when he starts listening to the tapes, he’s horrified to hear Hannah’s voice: Hannah, the girl he worked with, whom he adored (and secretly loved), who recently committed suicide. The thirteen tapes describe thirteen different reasons—events—people who caused Hannah to choose suicide as her solution. The narrative switches between Clay and Hannah, all the while illustrating the problems, anguish, and mistakes of modern high schoolers.

Review:
No one picking up this book will expect it to be happy. I can safely say that Thirteen Reasons Why is sufficiently, predictably sad and heart-wrenching. Jay Asher does an excellent job writing as an adolescent boy, and as an adolescent girl. He piles on the teen issues, but does so in a believable way. I suffer from bi-polar disorder, and I definitely considered suicide when I was in high school. The despair prominent in this book is very real, and very present in teens’ lives. Thirteen Reasons Why is also a great illustration of the ripple-effect. No one can avoid touching other people’s lives, and every action has a reaction. Suicide, too, is rarely caused by just one thing. I’d recommend Thirteen Reasons Why to readers who don’t mind getting sad or crying over a book, to teens who like “problem novels,” and to readers grappling with these issues themselves.