Yeah alright, let’s talk about suicide. On 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher.
There’s only about two ways you can go about this book. You’re either going to love it and think it’s probably the best thing since sliced bread in young adult fiction, you know, the kind that talks about the big stuff like suicides and bullying. Or you might find it just another one of those annoying young adult fiction you should have probably have avoided. Obviously I belong to the latter camp because I’ve always disliked the tone, the voice and the feel of young adult fiction. But if you always had the love for the genre, then you’d probably love the book.
Still, I can’t deny that it explores important topics. Young adult fiction often does: Palacio’s Wonder in bullying, Halse’s Speak in sexual abuse and i in bestiality. Whether these books are written well is a whole different story which I’m not going into. 13 Reasons Why, regardless of the quality covers the grounds of suicide, sexual abuse and most importantly, the dangerous of the passive silence of the majority. And yes, these are questions worth asking, especially to its target audience.
A blueprint to a suicide
The premise of the book is pretty creepy: a dude receives a set of tapes with the monologues of a girl who had killed herself some weeks ago. She quoted the 13 reasons which made her off herself, each reason is a side of a tape and each of those reason is a person who she had contact with at school whose interactions in the end, affected her and made her turn for the worse.
Clay didn’t think he’d done anything wrong though. Sure, he made out with her under some strange circumstances in a party, had always liked her and wished that she’d still be around. As he listened to the tapes, he started to get a clearer picture of who Hannah was as a person and how these small interactions, no matter how small, could contribute to her decision to an abrupt departure.
Clay would trace her steps, as she narrates her life when she had first come to town and struck up friendships, lost friendships, became the fodder for the school’s malicious gossip and losing faith in those around her. We listen to Hannah’s narration in real time as we alternate with Clay’s reality as he journeys into the night to listen to every syllable Hannah is saying, to figure out what happened to her and how he played a role in her subsequent death.
Moral of the story: just don’t be a dick hey
Actually, this is the moral of the story for a multitude of books, but especially true for 13 Reasons Why. Certain decisions such as creating a list of who has the best ass (of which Hannah did, regardless of whether this was true or not) or to use someone as a stepping stone to popularity, these actions may be minute but have detrimental consequences. It is good for young adults to pick this book up and understand that.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Hannah’s death is the guilt she felt in not speaking up when she had seen one of her classmates being sexually abused in an intoxicated state. In this, she was no doubt as guilty as anybody else who had been passively watching Hannah herself being bullied. Though ultimately, it is another tragedy that the last adult that she had turned to wasn’t able to help her and that he did not do enough to understand her problems, perhaps this guilt is one of the most significant factor in her suicide: the realisation that she was just like anybody else.
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13 Reasons Why, like most young adult books, is a quick read. It may take some getting used as we jump from Hannah’s first person narrative to Clay’s first person narrative, but it is the only way to make the book work as we follow Clay’s footsteps to make sense of things. Where the book falters is the tone. It is a flaw common to many, many young adult books especially written in the first person — the voice is fucking annoying. Sure, there is spite, the sentiment that things just ain’t right, that teenage angst. But I’ve never liked that tone as it cheapens the book and the message behind it. So it’s a shame, like any book, yes even young adult books, I wanted to like it but didn’t.
