I picked up the book around 7:15 Sunday night and read the inside sleeve, something I always do so I can settle myself into the situation the book is dealing with. This is what I find inside:
CLAY JENSEN'S FIRST LOVE
records her last words.
Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers sever cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker- his classmate and crush- who committed suicide two weeks earlier.
Hannah's voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why.
Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes first-hand witness to Hannah's pain, and learns the truth about himself- a truth he never wanted to face.
After reading this I felt that I had been lied to. "This is a story about a stupid boy!" I thought. But I decided to crack open the book and read it anyway to see what everyone was raving about.
I started not sure what to expect, but what I did find was awesome. I found that beyond finding out Hannah's reasoning behind her suicide, there is the story of Clay, the boy who loved her from afar. It was romantically tragic and sort of pained my heart.
As I was reading, my roommate was urging me to go out for my friends birthday party. I told her that after I was done reading for the night I would get ready and we could leave. What I didn't tell her is I didn't want to put the book down! By 9 I already had half the book finished, granted I would have been a lot further without all the distractions of people walking in and out of the room. So we went to my friends party and when I got back that night I actually set an alarm to wake up and finish the book. I'm not a morning person at all so this was surprising to me, but I needed to find out what happened! The next morning I woke up and within an hour and a half I had finished the book, fully pleased with the entire thing.
There were some intense points, but what can you suspect from a suspense novel. At the end of the novel there are thirteen questions in which Jay Asher, the author, answers about the book. One question asked if he was worried that the book would be hard for some people to get through because of the intense issues. His response was:
"Definitely. And that's why I focused on writing this as a suspense novel. One, it makes the reader keep turning the pages. And two, there are a lot of people out there who- for a variety of reasons- have a hard time stepping beyond their own ideas about certain subjects to explore the lives of others. So I wanted the readers to focus on the characters caught in the middle, rather than the issues themselves. Some people, primarily adults, would rather there be no books dealing with controversial subjects, even if those books help start a dialogue between teens and adults. Thankfully, I've heard from a lot of parents and teachers and librarians who are using that book for that very reason."
I found that Jay Asher handled all the issues Hannah had to deal with in a manner that was not offensive or would make someone feel squeamish while reading. The subjects dealt with in the novel were just stated and what the reader actually saw was the characters reaction to that situation and how it affected them afterward.
As an aspiring teacher I would definitely recommend this novel to my students. It is mostly a female fan base but I feel that if a male student were to pick it up he actually might enjoy it. I have already convinced my mom, and three other friends to read it and they are all fighting over who gets it next. That's when you know that it's a good book!
Wow! Ashley, this is quite an impressive accounting of your own reading process. It sounds like something in this book grabbed hold of you and wouldn't let go. I really appreciate how you avoid plot spoiling as you talk about your process of reading and responding to the book too because I think I'm going to add it to my "books to read list." It's clear that this text went beyond the stereotypes you assigned to it. When did you realize that was happening? Were you hooked right away? Did it take a little while to get past the "dumb boy" idea? Clearly, you appreciate what Asher did as an author to hook you. Can you figure out what those techniques were besides the use of the genre of suspense? Were there other important characters? Were you able to identify with Clay? How does the author humanize him or the issues in the text to grapple with the universal aspects of the text? Does this rise to the level of "great literature," do you think?
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