Jay Asher's debut novel is a YA suspense/drama that I would have read in one sitting if I hadn't started it late last night and needed to pause for sleep.
The story centers around Hannah Baker, a teenager who committed suicide by swallowing a bunch of pills. Before she took her own life, though, she made a set of tapes that speak about and directly to people and events that affected her along the way. Some negative, some positive, but in the end, everything affects everything.
The instructions Hannah gives at the beginning of the first tape (each tape is dedicated to a person) are for the people to listen all the way through the set and, when they're done, to pass them along to the next person in the sequence. There is a second set of tapes that exist, and the person keeping them has been instructed to release them publicly if any of the people on the list don't follow the instructions. Clay Jensen, who always had a crush on Hannah and spent a little time with her when they both spent a summer working at a movie theater together, is number nine.
Clay has no idea why he's on the tapes and after hearing the first few of them, begins to question every interaction he'd ever had with Hannah, wondering if something he said or did contributed to her decision to kill herself. On top of his panic at that idea, he learns a lot of things he never wanted to know about his classmates and about Hannah herself.
The text switches back and forth between Hannah's recorded voice and Clay's internal (and sometimes external) reactions. It's a very clever presentation. I've read plenty of books written in the format of letters, but I think this might be the first I've read written in the format of a tape. It's essentially the same, but there's something about imagining the actual voice on the other end that makes it a little more... real?
Everything affects everything. (The copy of the book I got from the library was signed by the author, who wrote that line with his signature.) It's not fair or realistic to expect people to always be on eggshells, wondering if every little thing they say or do will kick off a series of events, butterfly effect style, that could lead to a tragedy. But, it's also not fair to assume that the things we say or do don't have weight. Perhaps a good rule of thumb should be to think before we speak or act. Oh. Right. We're supposed to do that already.
I've been on a YA kick recently, but this one could easily read as an adult novel. Let's face it, though -- what better time to identify with the feeling that your life is over than in high school?
Coincidentally (or not, depending on how you feel the Universe works) as I signed on the computer to type this review, the first thing I saw online was the news of Amy Winehouse's death. There's a person who was screaming for help. And people were on hand to give it to her. How many times was she in and out of treatment? How many times did fans show up to concerts, hoping they would be the ones to witness her comeback? How many times did her parents defend her in the media? Perhaps there are just some people who are beyond any help they could get, and when a person is that far gone, I don't know if a tragic result is anybody's fault. But I guess the answer to that is Amy's to keep. Unless she left something for us to listen to.
Oh, right: "I ain't got the time, and if my daddy thinks I'm fine, they'll try to make me go to rehab, I won't go go go."
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