History's Parodox
Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher Book Review Book Review by Sophia Bellissimo
The novel begins as our narrator, Clay Jensen, mails a mysterious package to someone named Jenny. We soon learn that the package contains the audiotaped suicide note of
Hannah Baker, a girl Clay had a crush on before she killed herself about two weeks ago.
In the package, there are a total of seven cassette tapes and thirteen stories. On the first tape, Hannah tells her listeners that she holds each of them responsible in some way for her death, and that the tapes will explain why. After listening, each person must give the tapes to the next person on the list. She says that if anybody fails to pass them along, a copy of the recordings will be made public. The tapes also come with a map that listeners are meant to physically follow as they listen to her story.
The narrative moves back and forth between Hannah's and Clay's thoughts and actions.
This is hard to portray in a short summary, so remember that Clay's thoughts are always mixed in with Hannah's stories.
The thirteen stories are as follows: Justin Foley, Hannah's first kiss, started rumors that they did more than just kiss. Alex Standall pitted Hannah and Jessica Davis against each other.
Jessica Davis was upset by this and ended up hitting Hannah, leaving a scar on her forehead. Tyler Down allegedly took pictures of Hannah through her window (she calls him a Peeping Tom). Courtney Crimson, a super fake girl at school, started rumors about
Hannah. As he's listening to Courtney's tape, Clay gets on the city bus and runs into his middle school crush, Skye Miller. He starts to wonder why Skye always isolates herself from everybody. They exchange a few words and then Clay gets off the bus, outside of
Tyler Down's house. There, he runs into Marcus Cooley, who invites Clay to throw a rock at
Tyler's window (which is already broken). He learns that Marcus is also on the
The novel begins as our narrator, Clay Jensen, mails a mysterious package to someone named Jenny. We soon learn that the package contains the audiotaped suicide note of
Hannah Baker, a girl Clay had a crush on before she killed herself about two weeks ago.
In the package, there are a total of seven cassette tapes and thirteen stories. On the first tape, Hannah tells her listeners that she holds each of them responsible in some way for her death, and that the tapes will explain why. After listening, each person must give the tapes to the next person on the list. She says that if anybody fails to pass them along, a copy of the recordings will be made public. The tapes also come with a map that listeners are meant to physically follow as they listen to her story.
The narrative moves back and forth between Hannah's and Clay's thoughts and actions.
This is hard to portray in a short summary, so remember that Clay's thoughts are always mixed in with Hannah's stories.
The thirteen stories are as follows: Justin Foley, Hannah's first kiss, started rumors that they did more than just kiss. Alex Standall pitted Hannah and Jessica Davis against each other.
Jessica Davis was upset by this and ended up hitting Hannah, leaving a scar on her forehead. Tyler Down allegedly took pictures of Hannah through her window (she calls him a Peeping Tom). Courtney Crimson, a super fake girl at school, started rumors about
Hannah. As he's listening to Courtney's tape, Clay gets on the city bus and runs into his middle school crush, Skye Miller. He starts to wonder why Skye always isolates herself from everybody. They exchange a few words and then Clay gets off the bus, outside of
Tyler Down's house. There, he runs into Marcus Cooley, who invites Clay to throw a rock at
Tyler's window (which is already broken). He learns that Marcus is also on the