Thirteen Reasons Why

Every summer, our book club takes a break from meetings since it's too hard to schedule them with sporting events and games, vacations, and everything else that makes summer busy. But we do choose a page-y novel to read as our summer book, to be discussed upon meeting again in September. This summer, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher was the pick and it took me barely a week to finish. It was a relatively simple read, categorized as Young Adult, but offered a very clear message with events that will mature even those who still can't say the word vagina without snickering.

Clay Jensen, a high-schooler, comes home one day to a package waiting on his doorstep. It doesn't have a return address, but who isn't excited to receive a package? He is quickly disappointed to learn the shoe-sized box is full of cassette tapes made by the late Hannah Baker, a fellow student who committed suicide just short of Clay receiving the tapes. There are 13 recordings, sides A and B, and each tell a story relating a classmate to a reason why she killed herself; the 13 reasons/people why.

As a premise, the story is a little hard to swallow. Personally, I find it difficult to accept blame for something somebody did when I wasn't aware I was doing anything; to not only selfishly commit suicide, but then unload the blame on my doorstep for me to live with the rest of my life when we could have worked it out in person and gotten over it. Clay vacillated between hurt, anger, and sadness that he'd never get to know her better, but was ultimately grateful he understood her better, and discovered more about his classmates.

The deal is this: the 13 people on the tapes must keep the chain going, listen to all 13 stories, and pass them along to the person whose story is told after theirs. If they break the chain, a second set of tapes "will get out." The threat seems a bit of over-kill, but there actually are some issues that could get certain people in some legal hot water.

Without a doubt, the book is a page-turner (unless you're like me and take it along on Girls' Weekend), with every chapter a new story on a side of a cassette tape. Sometimes you think the worst, and sometimes you hope for the best, and there are some parts I found downright confusing or a bit of a stretch. In my personal opinion, each scenario - taken separately - doesn't, in my mind, equal ending one's life. That is such a final, ultimate decision that strips away so many things from so many people. But the overall moral of the story is that you never really know what someone is going through, and that a small act of kindness isn't too many steps ahead of being selfish or inconsiderate. Regardless of the meat of the story, or real lack-thereof, the book can teach us all something about ourselves and how we choose to interact with people, especially those we don't really know.