Clay comes home from school one day to find a package on his porch.  Yay for packages!  How exciting.  It doesn’t say who it’s from, so he excitedly rips into it.  Inside are thirteen cassette tapes.  Weird.  Who even uses cassette tapes anymore?  After hunting a player down (harder than it would seem), he puts the first tape in.  He’s shocked to hear the voice of Hannah Baker, a girl at school who had just committed suicide.

At the beginning of the tapes, Hannah explains that each tape represents a person.  On each tape she will explain what that particular person did to help contribute to her suicide.  Having received the tapes in the first place, Clay is obviously distraught, but to consider that his actions, unknowingly to him, played a role in her suicide is simply too much.  As he listens to each tape, he learns more than he wants to know about his fellow classmates, but it’s with fear and trepidation that he knows the next tape could very well be him.

Thirteen Reasons Why is thought provoking and is the type of book that brings up a lot of discussion points.  It’s the little things that we  do that may seem like a huge deal to somebody else.  Harmless gossip is not really harmless at all.  But in the end, are we really responsible for somebody else’s actions?

Why did Hannah place the blame on others, especially when she had so many opportunities to reach out and get help?  Who’s really responsible for the suicide?  Hannah?  Or the people listed on the tapes?  I’m one to say that the suicide was ultimately Hannah’s decision.  She obviously carried it out and I don’t think that it’s fair for the others to be held responsible for an action that wasn’t theirs.  But what of the ripple effects?  The little things that one does to wound the character of another.  To so deeply affect them that they aren’t able to shake it.  And what’s worse, to  not even realize it.  Thirteen Reasons Why makes us sit back and think before we talk or act.

Thirteen Reasons Why is told from the viewpoint of Clay as he listens to the tapes and alternates with Hannah’s side of the story on the tapes.  I couldn’t help but think about the book Skeleton Creek which alternates between written text and videos that the reader watches online to get the whole story.  I wonder how Thirteen Reasons Why would be in a similar format.  The written text as Clay’s point of view and Hannah’s told not in written word, as it is now, but rather in audio.  Wouldn’t that be cool?  A book told in audio and text?  This is the type of book that I think would be perfect for such a technique and would immerse the reader further into the story.

There was one small thing that bothered me throughout the book and I don’t know why I narrow in on it so specifically.  When Clay received the tapes and realizes they are from Hannah, he wonders why she would send them to him.  He thinks something along the lines of “Oh, the girl at school who committed suicide.  Hannah and I hardly know each other.  We are just acquaintances.”  I would quote the line but I don’t have the book in my possession but this was the feeling that I got when reading it.  Later in the book, we learn that Hannah and Clay had not only made out together at a party, but had had a heart-to-heart in depth conversation, which makes it more than just a “that girl” and “we hardly know each other.”  I suppose that thinking that they didn’t know each other, I was surprised by the unfolding story where they did know each other.  Although I’m sure I’m the only reader who feels this way, I don’t think the story was set up quite right because their relationship was not as explained.

I never felt sorry for Hannah, which as the character who killed herself because she felt bullied at school, I suppose I should have.  She was not likable to me.  There were so many times that she thought, “well, if this is what people think I’m already like, there is nothing I can do about it and I might as well act the part,” which is an attitude that made me want to throw the book across the room.  But I think that’s probably the point.  As a reader, I was so frustrated with her thought process that I’m sure that the people who found themselves the topic of each tape probably felt the same way.  In  retrospect, they wish that she had acted differently, thought differently, but there was nothing that they could do about it.

Thirteen Reasons Why is a great book for teens and adults that takes a good hard look at teens bullying teens, the warning signs of suicide, and suicide itself.  As I read this book for book club it also makes for a great discussion.  While it frustrated me to no end, I do think it’s worth the read and recommend it.

Links of interest:  Jay Asher website and blog.  More blogger reviews of Thirteen Reasons Why.
Genre:  Young Adult Fiction
Publisher:  Razorbill.  October 18, 2007
Hardcover, 320 pages.  320 pages.
Source: Library
Thirteen Reasons Why is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powells, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

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Knowing nothing about Jodi Picoult, I wasn’t quite sure what genre she even fell into. Then while browsing through my beloved Bookmarks Magazine I came across a review for Nineteen Minutes (which I didn’t read in full until after completing the book). They quoted the Christian Science Monitor as saying, “Nobody does ‘ripped from the headlines’ better than Picoult.” I’ve come to learn that Picoult takes tough issues head on.

Nineteen Minutes was a page turner. I could hardly put it down. While reading this book my dishes didn’t get done, the laundry didn’t get put away, dinner’s were simple, and the toys never got put away. A synopsis from Bookmarks Magazine:

On a cold March morning, 17-year-old Peter Houghton sets off for school with a small arsenal in his backpack. His lethal rampage takes only 19 minutes, but nine students and one teacher are killed, many are wounded, and the inhabitants of Sterling, New Hampshire, will never be the same. Moving back and forth through time, Jodi Picoult reveals the brutality and daily humiliation that Peter suffered at the hands of local bullies while following the drama of Peter’s trial. As the survivors and their families struggle to make sense of the tragedy, the parents wonder just how well they really know their children.

I can’t imagine reading about this if you’ve actually experienced a school shooting, but for those of us who pray that we never do, it seemed to portray what it would be like. Thank goodness I was never a target of bullying or a bully myself. I was quite happy and content in my little group of friends and was probably oblivious to this type of stuff in my high school. I won’t stereotype teenagers here, but I imagine that this kind of stuff does and will continue to happen. If only we could all have empathy and charity for those around us, the world would be a better place.

This was a brilliant inside look into bullying, it’s consequences, the heartache of a tragedy, it’s aftermath, and remembering that even a murderer has a mother who loves him.

The following video is a book trailer for Nineteen Minutes:

Visit Jodi Picoult’s website for a podcasts, group discussion guides, and more about the author.

So now that I have read my very first Jodi Picoult book, I will soon be reading Tenth Circle as part of an online book club. I also picked up My Sister’s Keeper secondhand and can’t wait to read both of these. What is your favorite Picoult book? If I were to choose only one book to read, which one should it be?