I am wearing my Exasperated Pants, you guys, and I'm not totally sure that's what Asher was going for.Y'ok. Clay receives a set of casette tapes that detail the thirteen reasons (wherein 'reasons' are 'people') why Hannah killed herself. Each person on the tapes has to listen to the tapes and then send them to the next person on the tapes, or a second set of tapes will be released to the public, unleashing what Bad People they are on the world.
On the one hand, it's super melodramatic. And you know me. I love melodrama. I don't read Victorian sensation novels and watch Moulin Rouge on repeat for no reason. But this? This was too melodramatic even for me. This was over-analyzey bullshit. This was your roommate in college whose life was a series of tragic events, and who would INVENT tragic events when no tragic events were currently available (Denise, I am totally not talking about you. I am talking about a theoretical roommate [or possibly me. I had never-ending relationship drama that year]).
And flashbacks to how I feel every time I'm all, This Holocaust book is crappy crap! (This is a thing that I say a lot.) Because Suicide and the Teens Who Commit It is very seeerious business. Seeerious enough that I feel cringy even spelling 'seeerious' in that goofy fashion. But Hannah is a Blamey McBlamerson who blames everyone else for everything that goes wrong in her life, ever.
Because ok, bad things happen to her. Some of them are Very Bad and some of them are just shitty high school stuff. But she's furious with everyone for not realizing how damaged she is and treating her with extra-special caution. She cuts no one any slack, and gives no one any room for being a wretchedly insecure teenager, all the while being How could you do that!? Couldn't you see that I was just a wretchedly insecure teenager? Double standards are rife among us!!
Because, rotten, yes, to ask a girl for a lift to a party and then prefer the company of cute boys to hers when you get there. A thousand times worse, though, to point to that incident as one of your 'reasons why.' I killed myself because you like boys more than me. Also, you never say 'good-bye' first. Or, I killed myself because I was in the car when you knocked out a stop sign, the lack of which sign caused a fatal accident later that evening, and now I'm wracked with guilt because I did nothing to stop you, and this guilt = your fault.
Maybe most vindictive is the last tape, where she records herself visiting the guidance counselor (who will receive these tapes last) and expecting him to read her tortured mind and save her. You show me a guidance counselor who has a kid kill themselves on his watch who doesn't already feel culpable without some tapes showing up to say You are correct. This is your fault.
And that, in the end, is why I can't feel sorry for Hannah. Because for her to release these tapes is as wilfully cruel as anything ever done to her. And if it isn't Asher's intent to paint her as overly needy and obsessive, always wondering why someone (ostensibly) slighted her or why no one is pushing past her repeated assertions that she doesn't need anyone to watch out for her, then he fails. I know I will end up on Hannah's shit list for saying this, but bitch? Please.
Also, the narratological continuity is kind of crap and Clay keeps interrupting the tapes to commentate his listening (I'm pulling up some grass, I'm drinking a soda) and I hope this book spoke to someone in dire straits because all it did for me was get me all het up.
Four caterpillars if he meant to make her sympathetic, six if he didn't.
finally! someone who thought the same as me. thank you! ah...blamey mcblamerson. a cousin perhaps to messers dan and rufus "judgy mcjudgerson" humphrey from gossip girl???
ReplyDeleteOh man, that's some heavy shit.
ReplyDeleteWEll, I'll be damned. I wouldn't read this book originally because I have tween aged kids and didn't think I could handle the reality of it all. But now, I have a whole new reason. If there is one thing that drives me nuts, it is kids who think all problems are someone else's fault. To leave a series of tapes, blaming their death on these types of things, well, that is just very mean-spirited.
ReplyDeleteI've had no desire to read this for all the reasons you stated.
ReplyDeleteI never wrote a review after reading this book last year, because I couldn't put into words what bothered me about this book. Thank you for finding the words. I was also prob worried since so many people lurve this book, and was not comfortable rocking their boat (I'm a chicken), but I should have realized I'm not the only one who would feel that way.
ReplyDeleteSuck it up buttercup - everyone feels crappy when they are a teen.
Yeah, this sounds pretty awful :( I think that is the most selfish thing someone could possibly do ... blame her suicide on other people, and for really STUPID reasons ... they're going to feel guilty until the day they die, fgs. How ridiculous. Why couldn't she just, like, go visit someone far away for a while - instead of killing herself - she could have still sent out the tapes, if she felt so strongly about the thirteen reasons, but - SERIOUSLY - killing herself? A little over-the-top.
ReplyDeleteI abandoned this book a few years ago for reasons I couldn't pinpoint. Thank you for pinpointing the reasons why.
ReplyDeleteWait I'm confused... so this guy finds these tapes, and he's one of the people being blamed? But in the tapes the girl threatens to send them to the press if he doesn't pass them on? How's she gonna go and do that if she killed herself?
ReplyDeleteAlayne - The Crowded Leaf
So really, it wasn't like, you raped me and you got me hooked on drugs and you spilled pig's blood on me at prom, but more like you stole my barbie when I was five, and you didn't comment on my new haircut and you laughed at me that one time I tripped?
ReplyDeleteSuck.
In other news, I have requested all three books for the Horrible Dare Challenge at the library and will read them in the order they come in from other branches. L.A. Candy had the least amount of requests so that will probably be first.
Ok this is almost the worst part, because I felt like Asher thought he needed a rape scene (because how can you justifiably kill yourself unless you've been raped, amirite?) so near then end when Hannah's all, WOE MY LIFE she goes out to see if she can get this asshat to donk her because that will mean her life is TRULY awful, and then when he DOES she's like, And then he put his hand on my thigh even though I looked away to indicate I wasn't into it. Like, I know that 'no means no' and 'looking away often means no' and 'sometimes yes means no' and I stand by the right of women to change their minds, which is why I didn't bring this up in the review, but if you go out LOOKING to push your sanity over the edge by being raped (I am totally going to get stabbed for that sentence) then I think you own some responsibility.
ReplyDeleteOk ... this might be my favorite review of yours EVER. I don't know why exactly .. perhaps the Blamey McBlamerson or the sudden appearance of a manatee or perhaps because so many reviews have been so reverential about this book but you call it like you see it.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I absolutely loved this book, I will say that I liked your review as well. I see your points, and they have been taken.
ReplyDeleteI will say though, I did thoroughly love this book, and not because of the whole suicide thing because that is something never to love, but because I really liked how Asher wrote it.
I read this book right around the time I read Speak, Some Girls Are, and a couple other in the same genre, and I have concluded that teen rape/suicide make best sellers.....no matter what, regardless of how believable or whatever.
Your review is exactly why I haven't read this book! I am not at all the girl who sneers at suicide and says it is invariably selfish and people who do it are weak selfish cowards - but I have heard some really awful (true) stories of people who set things up to make their suicides the maximum amount painful for various people in their lives. I have no sympathy with Hannah just from the premise of the book. Other people aren't responsible for your life, fictional girl! You are responsible for your own self!
ReplyDeleteEnd heartless rant.
I found Hannah to be unsympathetic as well. She really irritated me.
ReplyDeleteI was annoyed by Hannah, but I still enjoyed the book. I do believe though that her tapes were less an answer to "why" and more of a vengeance - and a very cruel one at that.
ReplyDeleteSo glad to find out you didn't like this one either. Personally, my loathing knows no bounds. This book just plain pissed me off.
ReplyDeleteI felt like it tapped into that bit of immature narcissistic junior-high school feeling of "Oh yeah? Well, maybe I'll kill myself and send you all tapes about how you were mean to me and then you'll be sorry!" Self-indulgent crap.
And you know what bothered me the most? I fully expected to find at the end of the book a section addressed to young readers about "Where to go for help if you're feeling suicidal" and "What to do if you think a friend is going to kill themselves." Except there was nothing like that. Instead we got a call-out to the author's friends. Excuse me? You're writing a book that makes suicide look like the "best revenge evah!" and then nothing? Grrrrrr.
HATED this book.