Tolog Review: Thirteen Reasons Why

Thirteen Reasons Why
by Jay Asher
reviewed by Fiona Stayton

In life, we must make choices. Many are small and mundane, for example what should I eat for lunch or which pair of shoes matches my outfit. Almost as often, however, we are faced with situations in which our decisions result in larger consequences. 

Jay Asher’s novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, tells the story of a how a series of seemingly small decisions tragically result in the largest decision a person can make. Almost as an act of defiance, Hannah Baker kills herself, and wants to make sure everyone understands not just why she decided to do this but how their own choices contributed to her decision. 

The result is a compelling, almost addictive round-robin of blame, that raises all sorts of questions about responsibility, guilt and how our decisions affect the lives of others. 

Hannah Baker was a normal girl with the secret love for chocolate bars, blue nail polish and poetry. Then, as her first year of high school unfolds, she begins to feel that every choice she makes is the wrong one. She doesn’t fit in at parties but she continues to go to them, she lets a boy touch her even though she doesn’t want him to, she hangs out with people she can’t really trust. 

Day by day, Hannah’s sanity begins to crumble. Each choice she and her peers begin to make, impact her greatly so much so she decides she can’t take any more. 

Before she takes her own life, she decides to make seven cassette tapes on which thirteen stories explain her reasons for her in great detail. “Because there are thirteen sides to every story”.

When Clay Jensen, our narrator, receives a mysterious box containing seven cassette tapes, he begins to listen to them. The tapes tells the experiences Hannah faced and how the choices of the thirteen people pushed her to her decision her to swallow the pills.

As Clay continues listening, he is overwhelmed by the things people had done to Hannah. 

I had first heard about this story in eighth grade, but I didn’t think it could be good. A book about suicide sounded depressing and over my head; why would any sane person kill themselves? The moment I began reading it, however, I was caught up in the whirlwind of Hannah’s life. Though I have never been bullied the way Hannah was, everyone knows what it’s like to be stabbed in the back by a supposed friend. 

With a good ear for teen dialogue and a focus on what people are feeling rather than what they’re wearing, Asher puts the reader in Hannah’s place, sometimes uncomfortably so. 

Soon, I began feeling every emotion Hannah felt including anger toward the 12 people mentioned on the tape.
As Clay gets to the end of Hannah’s story, he finally understands her, and more important why she made the tapes. It’s an act of revenge. Their choices were part of the reason Hannah ended her life, now they would have to live with the consequences of her decision.

That was her final choice; Hannah decided to end her life but she made sure a part of her would go on living.