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

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

While attending a prestigious college, Comfort meets Ben, an older 24-year old student who has just finished serving in the Navy.  Although it’s obvious that he doesn’t fit in, Comfort is immediately drawn to him and they start dating.  Comfort chronicles their ups and downs and the strain of Ben’s mental illness.  Eighteen months later, Ben kills himself and Comfort is racked with guilt.  What she doesn’t understand most is that nobody knows how to talk to her anymore.  Nobody even asks her how she is handling Ben’s death.  It’s as if because she was the closest to Ben at the time of his death, nobody will even acknowledge that he once existed in her life.

For the next fifteen years, she come to terms with Ben’s death and shares candidly her journey of life, love, hurt, guilt, and forgiveness.  Surviving Ben’s Suicide is well written but there was something to be desired.  I think that this is probably because I don’t think the back and forth time line works especially well.  Maybe I was longing for a more linear telling so I could accompany Comfort on the journey as she was making it and without knowing how she was now.  Other than that, I appreciated her honest approach to a very taboo subject and came away with an appreciation that she was able to share with the reader her candid and very personal thoughts.

A few insights I liked:

But why live if I had to discard my past life?  For me, that took away the meaning in life.  I’ve heard some people say that the meaning of life was simply to enjoy the journey.  The passage that Ben’s uncle read at the funeral said that the meaning of life was love.  Other people have said that there is no particular meaning and that we, as human beings, are overly analytical.

I believed, on the contrary, that each person hadd his or her own meaning of life and that the key to that meaning might be the link between our memories and the way we lived our lives at present.  To me, that was the secret.  That was the closest that I could come to reaching my potential.  By allowing myself to look back and to learn from the people and the events in my life, I could do better in the future.  And that was why I refused to forget about my bus accident or Ben’s suicide.  My memories of both events influenced the decisions that I made every day and the way I treated otehr people and myself.  I couldn’t think of anything more pertinent, more critical, more vital than memories.

and

One of the paradoxes of surviving Ben’s suicide is that I have learned two seeming contradictions.  One, I have the power to make a difference in some small way to others.  Two, I do not have absolute control over other people.  The balance between trying to help and backing off has been hard for me to find, but reaching Antoine [a student of hers] proved to me that I needed to keep trying.

I think this ending passage is just beautiful:

I like to think of my memories of the events in my life as old books that I keep next to my bed, on a shelf in the study, or up in the attic.  Some of them I refer to regularly.  Some I may never look at again.  Some are tragedies.  Others, comedies.  Some I understand now.  Some I will understand after a few more readings.  Others will cause me to pull out  my hair, and still I may never understand them entirely.  But the more I read, the better I will grasp the meaning of my books and the meaning that my library has in my life.

Visit C. Comfort Shields website and blog.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Personally, I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was a great story with wonderful characters. To quickly summarize, the book is narrated by Jacob Jankowski who intertwines two stories: his current life as an old man in a nursing home and that of a much younger Jacob whom once worked as a vet for a traveling circus. Along the way, he falls in love with both Marlena and Rosie, one the beautiful equestrian star, the other the shows elephant. The book takes us literally on a train ride of adventure meeting along the way circus freaks and clowns, engaging characters, and a murder mystery that keeps the pages turning. I thought it was a wonderful story with an ending that literally made me laugh out loud. This book deserves all the hype it has been receiving.

So why my hesitation? What did I find so bothersome about this book? Why do I not want to recommend Water for Elephants to my close friends and family, much less admit to them that I read the entire thing? Hmm . . . how do I put it? Oh, it’s easy: why does so much current literature have so much sex?!! Why do authors feel the need to spell out every single, graphic detail? I’m okay with innuendos and suggestiveness. Just leave it me to fill in the blanks. But why does everything have to be, well, just too much! Is this really okay? Where has our brazen culture taken us? I just don’t enjoy reading what I would consider to be very sexually explicit material.

In Water for Elephants, the story was great and going along so well. Then I hit the first scene and I thought, well, maybe it won’t happen again. Well, it did and then it did again. I wanted to stop reading, put it down, admit that I would never put up with that type of material. But the story had me. Why must such good stories, in my opinion, be ruined in this way. Yes, I understand, we are all sexual beings and how do we write or read about life without sex being brought into the picture? I just question why authors have to get so vividly graphic. Does it really make the story better? Grittier? Edgier? In my opinion, the less details the better.

My gripe isn’t just with this book. This is happening with literature all the time now. One can never know how “safe” a book is anymore. This topic comes up a lot while discussing which books to read next for our neighborhood book group. One must always pre-read the book to deem how appropriate it is. I have to admit, I’ve read my fair share of books with questionable content, but how does one really find out before getting into the thick of it? This topic has been on my mind quite a bit recently, as I also read The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold and found the same graphic details (by the way, that character is crazy!How you can go off and have sex twice within 24 hours of killing your mother is beyond me! But that’s a whole other story).

So there you have it. Me on my soapbox. I’ve said it. (Now you can go search my library, call me a hypocrite and I’ll cower down in shame!)

Oh, I almost forgot, visit Sara Gruen’s website for more about Water for Elephants and a Reading Group Guide.