*Trigger warning* This post will discuss suicide, as this is the topic at the heart of 13 Reasons Why.
I’ve seen both seasons of 13 Reasons Why on Netflix, so I thought I knew what I was getting into when I picked this novel up from the communal library at work. I was not prepared for how it would affect me. In short: I do not recommend it.
Here is a play-by-play of the 13 thoughts I noted down while reading 13 Reasons Why:
- Thank GOD I’m not in high school anymore.
- Where are these kids’ parents? How is it they’re all out after dark All. The. Time?!
- Hannah Baker is my worst nightmare. The person keeping score of every mistake I make, and holding it against me eternally.
- Good grief she is dramatic. I recall intensely disliking her in the TV show, but she’s someone even worse in print. Her righteousness. It’s nauseating.
- She really has positioned herself as the constant victim, waiting to be wronged again and again and again. She has not yet once reflected on her own poor choices or behaviour. Yet she is consistently pointing out and hanging on to other’s mistakes.
- Did she… Did she just say that she killed herself to punish others? Was the first time she decides to kill herself really when a boy touched her on her thigh without her consent…? “The next day, Marcus, I decided something. I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back.” Surely there is more to it than that?
- Oh shit. Yep there is more to it.
- Holy shit this is dark. Woah.
- … okay I really don’t remember that from the Netflix series. Did I repress it?
- Oh my god.
- So after all that, she creates one last test. One last chance for someone to say the magic words to stop her from killing herself… She’s tested everyone around her to see if they will read the suicidal signs and stop her.
- Thank god they didn’t give a replay of her suicide, as they did in the TV series. I don’t think I could handle that (again).
- Ok. Finished. That was… Unpleasant? Important? Infuriating? Maybe all those things at once?
It’s now been 24 hours since I finished 13 Reasons Why, and my initial confusion has now morphed to outrage.
For anyone who has lost a friend or family member to suicide, you know: you cannot help but ask yourself if you could have stopped it. If it was your fault. And according to this garbage fire of a book, it is. I refuse to accept that. And with that message, I am extremely concerned that this book is aimed at teenagers.
The book ends with the two-dimensional protagonist, Clay, chasing another apparently-depressed female student (she’s wearing black!) down the corridor, determined to engage her in a conversation and save her from Hannah’s fate. This overwhelming guilt and onus is placed on him. And the book seems to support this. The message to all impressionable readers is that you may be the one thing standing in the way of the pretty depressed girl from taking her life. What a burden to place on others.
Without getting too personal, I reject that message. It is not up to your peers to rescue you from your mental health. Yes, social support can help. But ultimately, if you want help, you need to ask for it. To seek it out. At some point, you’ve got to fight. It was not Clay’s job to read Hannah’s signs, interpret her silences, and save her. His job was to respect her wishes and, when she told him to back off, he did that. He respected her enough to listen to her explicit words (not read between the lines). And his character was punished for this.
I hope that anyone out there who is has felt the unbearable burden of losing a friend or family member to suicide can hear me when I say: it was not your fault.
It was not your fault.
And %$&# this book for saying otherwise.
1 tear-soaked star out of 5.