bff charm: yay!
swoonworthy scale: 2
talky talk: fetch
bonus factor: walkman
relationship status: that ex you still sort of have feelings for
th1rteen r3asons why, by jay asher
the deal:
Clay Jenson arrives home from school one day to find a package on his front porch. Inside? A map and seven cassette tapes. From a dead girl.
Hannah Baker killed herself two weeks prior, and everyone was left wondering why. Those who receive the tapes and follow her journey will have those questions answered, and those answers will open their eyes to the hearts and minds of themselves and the people around them.
bff charm: yay!
There are two narrators to this story, Hannah and Clay. Hannah’s dead, so it’s a bit difficult to be BFF with her, but from all accounts, she was pretty awesome while she was alive. Both Hannah and Clay are flawed individuals, but their flaws are understandable and realistic. Yes, they can be selfish, shallow and short-sighted, but I’ve never met a teenager who wasn’t these things.
swoonworthy scale: 2
Did I swoon over Hannah and Clay as a couple? Nah, not really. Death, and particularly suicide, is not romantic, no matter what Shakespeare may think. Mostly it just sucks, large.
That said, I think we’ve all been where Clay’s at – left looking back on your time with someone and wondering what more you could have done.
talky talk: fetch
The book suffers, I think, from its main narrative device – that of a dead girl and a living boy narrating the same story. There’s just a little too much of “Hannah said this, and now I feel like this” in this novel, which is unfortunate because a more compelling narration could have hidden some of the book’s other flaws.
bonus factor: walkman
Well, I was hardly going to put suicide as the bonus factor, right? Actually, this would have been EVEN BETTER if Hannah had recorded her suicide note on those little mini-tapes from the 80s. Remember those? They only had room for one song on each side and were about the size of a matchbook. Mine had “Manic Monday” and “Locomotion” by Kylie Minogue. Good times.
casting call:
mandy moore as hannah baker
Um, I love Mandy Moore, alright? And if I’m going to feel sympathetic about a girl who does spend an entire book talking about her problems, I’m going to need Mandy Moore’s effortless charm.
zach gilford as clay jenson
I wonder if I can manage to cast an FNL actor for every book report I do. I BET I CAN. Also, I’m not sure how I feel about seeing that little patch of skin on Gilford’s tummy in this picture. Matt Saracen, put some clothes on!
relationship status: that ex you still sort of have feelings for
After reading this book, I gave it to my friend Meredith with the instructions, “give this to poshdeluxe. I don’t know what to think of it.” Losing a loved one to suicide is something I wish I could say I have never experienced, but my very good friend took her life a few years ago. My feelings about that, and her, are at best unresolved, and I found as I was reading this book that my thoughts naturally strayed to my friend. Eventually, it became too difficult to judge the book on its own merits – were the flaws I found it to have actually relevant, or was I just judging it, and the characters, based on my own experience? I’m still not sure, except to say that even with my personal feelings removed, I still didn’t completely buy the story and I’m not sure I liked the book.
That said, one thing I did like about the book was the message (dumbed down though it may have been). Hannah Baker did not suffer from clinical depression, or some other disease which we may often attribute to suicide, but rather from a million pointed barbs or looks, a million turned-away faces or dashed dreams, until, in the end, there was nothing left to hope for. I often make a (tactless) joke about my inability to be rude to strangers, even when they deserve it, by saying that all people are two mean comments away from offing themselves on any given day and I don’t want to be the one who makes the second comment. The thing is, it’s true. You never know when compassion and understanding and the patience to really listen will save someone’s life, and you certainly don’t want to learn the hard way.
But, apart from all that, who the heck names their book with numbers replacing letters? I really hate that. Se7en got away with it, because that movie is awesome. You, Th1rteen R3asons Why, are no Se7en.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow. Thanks for the review! I’ve been meaning to read this book, but have also been hesitant, because of the intensity of the subject, and also because I’m stuck in a fantasy genre hurricane. Beautifully written relationship status!
“You never know when compassion and understanding and the patience to really listen will save someone’s life, and you certainly don’t want to learn the hard way.”
a-men, lady. thanks for sharing about yr own personal connection with this story. honestly, i feel more impacted by your review than by the book itself!
cos yes, you did loan it to me, and yes, i tried to read it… and made it about three quarters of the way through before i had to stop because it was just… bad.
i agree that the message of the book, as you so eloquently explained, is really important, but GAH i could not HANDLE all of the cliches thrown into this story! it’s like jay asher watched a ton of lifetime movies and after school specials before he decided to write this book, and let me just say, to future authors out there: LIFETIME TV DOES YOU NO FAVORS IN THE MUSE DEPARTMENT.
consequently, i have to (respectfully) disagree with you on the bff charm cos I COULD NOT STAND HANNAH. ok i feel evil for typing that cos she killed herself and now i’m just gonna remind myself that it’s a fictional character and nope, still feel guilty. but honestly! just like clay, i really wanted to understand her, but jay asher was like determined to make her a one-dimensional whiney (and vengeful!) drama queen. blah.
i do have to agree on the casting, though, cos MANDY MOORE CALL ME I LOVE YOU.
i really hope you live up to yr FNL casting challenge. i mean, it’s tough work, but please know that we will all be grateful to you for making FYA a better (and hotter) place.
Lovely and resonant review, and I’ve never really thought about why I refuse to be rude to strangers, even if they deserve it, but you summed it up nicely. Be nice to people. It will make you feel better.
Yeah, I agree, Sarah. In the end it was all just a little too much A Very Important Lesson For Teens. Like “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger” only NOT AWESOME.
(cause, really, that’s an awesome movie)
My 14 year old cousin was reading it for school this summer – I’ll have to ask her what she thought of it. I admit that when I was 13 or 14, there were a lot of books that I was pretty sure were THE DEEPEST THINGS EVER WRITTEN.
In the end, I think what bothered me is that it didn’t do much to advance the dialogue of teenage suicide in any realistic, non-ham-fisted way. Hannah killed herself, and everyone felt really bad about that, and Jay at least makes an effort to change his ways, but what does that tell us about the people we see every day, or our kids or siblings or cousins or neighbors? Does this book make them more likely to see the signs? Or to understand why someone would kill themselves? I’m not sure it does.
Which is not to say that novels must be Deep or Life Changing – they don’t have to be and most of the time shouldn’t try to be. But if you’re GOING to try to be Deep and Life-Changing, then you need to actually be good. Otherwise, it all just falls apart.
I’m SO late to the game here, but I really think of Hannah as being Jessy Schram (Hannah Griffiths from Veronica Mars).
Huh, I rather liked this book when I read it last year. It might be clichéed but immediately after finishing it I had this immense wish to just be better. Props for that. I found it very intense and I read it in two days. Maybe it’s the absence of after school specials in my life.
what the hell is Se7en????
Se7en is a movie that has Brad Pitt and the seven deadly sins.