Jay Asher (1) (1975–)
Author of Thirteen Reasons Why
For other authors named Jay Asher, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Jay Asher's novel Thirteen Reasons Why, has appeared on the NYT bestseller list regularly in the last nine years. It was also one of the most challenged books of 2017, according to the American Library Association. (Bowker Author Biography)
Works by Jay Asher
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1975-09-30
- Gender
- male
- Education
- San Luis Obispo High School
Cuesta Community College
California Polytechnic State University - Occupations
- children's book author
- Short biography
- Jay Asher was born in Arcadia, California on September 30, 1975. He grew up in a family that encouraged all of his interests, from playing the guitar to his writing. He attended Cuesta College right after graduating from high school. It was here where he wrote his first two children’s books for a class called Children’s Literature Appreciation. At this point in his life, he had decided he wanted to become an elementary school teacher. He then transferred to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo where he left his senior year in order to pursue his career as a serious writer. Throughout his life he worked in various establishments, including as a salesman in a shoe store and in libraries and bookstores. Many of his work experiences had an impact on some aspect of his writing.
He has published only one book to date, Thirteen Reasons Why, which was published in October 2007. He is currently working on his second Young Adult novel, and has written several picture books and screenplays. Thirteen Reasons Why has won several awards and has received five stars from Teen Book Review. It also has received high reviews from fellow authors such as Ellen Hopkins, Chris Crutcher, and Gordon Kormon. - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Arcadia, California, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- California, USA
Members
Reviews
This is one of those books that begins with a great premise: Emma, a teenager in 1996 Pennsylvania, accesses the Internet on her new PC for the first time and somehow is able to access her Facebook account fifteen years in the future. As she explores her future life, she discovers that her changing attitudes can affect her future as well, while her inclusion of her next-door neighbor and onetime best friend Josh into her confidence opens up new understandings about himself as well. Now some show more people might complain that this idea isn't explored as fully as it could have been -- that Emma didn't do what any sensible teenager living in 1990s America would have done, which was to discover which stocks she should invest in, or which international leaders she should assassinate, or something like that. Such complaints, though, miss both the constraints of the premise (she can only access her Facebook account and not the entirety of the Internet in 2011) and what this novel really is, which is a study of two teenagers on the verge of adulthood who gain a unique understanding for what those relationships will be like. It's touching and mature in many ways, and while the ending is hardly a surprise it's a journey that is definitely worth reading. show less
Honestly fuck this book? It's been years since I originally read this, but as I remember it everything Hannah Baker goes through is just used to ~teach the main guy to be a "better man". Women are not there simply to progress a mans story, and her pain and trauma should never be used as simply a way to let him "grow".
You can't blame me for having high expectations for Jay Asher's debut, Thirteen Reasons Why. Even if it hadn't been hyped all over the blogosphere, its very pretty* cover tells the story of its accolades: a New York Times bestseller, a Kirkus starred review--why, it even bears a cover blurb by Sherman Alexie! It would have to be a rare book to rise to such lofty expectations. Unfortunately, Thirteen Reasons Why did not prove to be that book. Instead of the "brilliant and mesmerizing" story show more of the suicide of a teenage girl, it proved to be little more than tragedy porn. While I might not be able to conjure thirteen reasons why Asher's debut fell flat for me, I can at least offer a solid handful.Persistent problems with voice. If industry experts--publishers and agents--are to be believed, the most pressing concern for any writer writing for and about contemporary teenagers is voice. We should, they tell us, write honestly and accurately, capturing the speech and thoughts of today's teens. Unfortunately, I found the voice Asher uses not only inauthentic, but fairly distracting from what's a unique concept and should be an enveloping read. Thirteen Reasons Why is, in fact, narrated by two parties--the first narrator, bookish nerd Clay, is mourning the suicide of the second, popular girl Hannah Baker, who narrates via a series of cassette tapes that form a long-form suicide note. But you'll note that I said that Ashes uses a "voice" here, not "voices." Because it's true--save for the fact that Hannah's narration is set in italics, it's indistinguishable in style and tone from Clay's.It's a voice that's far more appropriate than for Clay than Hannah, stilted and overly formal and frankly kind of awkward. Asher's word choices are odd--once, he refers to a store that has "all the best candies" rather than "all the best candy." And it's filled with clunky repetition that doesn't quite manage to ascend to poetry, stuff like: "It was never a lost poem, Ryan. And you never found it, so it did not belong in your collection. But in your collection is exactly where other people found it. That's where teachers stumbled across it right before their lectures on poetry. That's where classrooms full of students cut up my poem." In small doses, such repetitions might have been an effective device, but it's constant here, distracting and not altogether artful. And the conflation of Clay's and Hannah's voices have me convinced that this wasn't entirely intentional on Asher's part--that it represents a lack of control rather than a deliberate artistic choice.A bizarre preoccupation with the sexuality of its female lead. Mind, I have no problem with sexual content generally or the sexuality of teenage girls specifically--in fact, I think that all young adult authors have an obligation to talk honestly of the real lives of their target demographic, which includes sex. But in Asher's case, it's not only Hannah's sex life that's held up to scrutiny but instead her purity. Ten of thirteen of her "reasons" for committing suicide concern either her reputation or the reputations of other teenage girls. And, while my own experiences and the experiences of women I love have taught me that non-consensual sexual exchanges are all too common, the way that Asher discusses forced sexual interactions has a certain flatness--it lacks the guilt, the fear, the confusion, the complexity with which teenage girls actually regarded these experiences. Bottom line, when Hannah says "I think that's the reason, in my dreams, my first kiss took place at the rocket ship. It reminded me of innocence. And I wanted my first kiss to be just that. Innocent," and "I've had my butt grabbed before--no big deal--but this time it was grabbed because someone wrote my name on a list," I just didn't believe that this was the reaction of a teenage girl. Instead, it sounds like the reaction of an older man--a dad, maybe--and the type of propriety-obsessed reaction he'd like her to have to both her budding sexuality and to complicated and sometimes unsavory sexual encounters. It felt male gazey, a suspicion that only deepened during a scene where Hannah and a female friend mime a porny massage for the benefit of a Peeping Tom, a scene that was a major WTF for me.A story that keeps the reader at arms' length. Many of Hannah's "reasons" seem trifling--and it's not entirely clear whether Asher meant this as intentional or not. More troubling, though, is the implication that there are deeper reasons that go unexplored--more compelling and potentially more emotionally affecting. For example, it's implied that Hannah's parents own a failing business, but the impact of this on Hannah's life is hardly mentioned, and her parents aren't even described. Further, hazy references to Hannah going on successful dates are made, but we never see these interactions, either. And most importantly, we never get to hear the conversations she has with Clay, either during their tenure as coworkers at a movie theater, or during a party near the novel's climax. This makes it difficult to believe that these characters have any genuine chemistry with one another. Clay tells us that he loves Hannah, but we're only told and never shown any evidence for this. Instead, we got cheesy and frankly unbelievable anecdotes about student poetry disseminated by teachers for public ridicule, about Peeping Toms, about car crashes. This distance, on all levels, meant that I just never quite believed that the story could possibly happen as told. Though the premise was innovative, and the hype quite loud, and for all the promise of Asher's premise, I didn't buy it. *Pretty, but like everything about this novel, flawed. I mean, what teenage girl swings in white pumps and ruffled leg warmers. Who does that? show less
Two weeks after Hannah commits suicide, Clay receives a box without a return address and only containing 7 cassette tapes in the mail. What Clay soon discovers is that these tapes were made by Hannah right before she killed herself in order to tell the thirteen reasons why she did it. The tapes have been making their way around to the people who have had some impact on Hannah’s life – and mostly not in a good way. The ones who started her in the direction that she’s going in, the ones show more who compounded what she was doing, the ones who did nothing to help.
Started this book the other evening, and stayed up way too late in order to finish it. I don’t normally read a whole book in one evening, but in this case I just couldn’t put it down. Drew me in right from the beginning. It was a positively heart-wrenching book; brilliant; so sad and yet somehow so filled with hope. The way that I could feel both Hannah’s and Clay’s pain, and see the way their characters changed throughout the book (even though Clay listening to the tapes took place over just one night) was fabulous. Seeing Hannah through Clay’s eyes, yet hearing her story through the tapes that Clay is listening to, created so much depth to Hannah – you saw how she saw herself, and how others saw her and these were both so different that it was at times hard to relate one person to the other. It definitely showed how one persons perception can be so different than another persons. It showed how one person’s life can get out of control so quickly, can change so quickly, and can snowball to the point where that person no longer has control over his/her own life.
This book also has a great message to not be afraid to act if you think something is wrong with a friend, and to look at what the consequences of your actions might be. So many things in this book could have been prevented so easily, but because no one acted and just let things snowball, well…
Fabulous book. I highly recommend it, and while it’s a YA book, I think that everyone could get something out of it. The story itself is going to be sticking with me for a very long time. show less
Started this book the other evening, and stayed up way too late in order to finish it. I don’t normally read a whole book in one evening, but in this case I just couldn’t put it down. Drew me in right from the beginning. It was a positively heart-wrenching book; brilliant; so sad and yet somehow so filled with hope. The way that I could feel both Hannah’s and Clay’s pain, and see the way their characters changed throughout the book (even though Clay listening to the tapes took place over just one night) was fabulous. Seeing Hannah through Clay’s eyes, yet hearing her story through the tapes that Clay is listening to, created so much depth to Hannah – you saw how she saw herself, and how others saw her and these were both so different that it was at times hard to relate one person to the other. It definitely showed how one persons perception can be so different than another persons. It showed how one person’s life can get out of control so quickly, can change so quickly, and can snowball to the point where that person no longer has control over his/her own life.
This book also has a great message to not be afraid to act if you think something is wrong with a friend, and to look at what the consequences of your actions might be. So many things in this book could have been prevented so easily, but because no one acted and just let things snowball, well…
Fabulous book. I highly recommend it, and while it’s a YA book, I think that everyone could get something out of it. The story itself is going to be sticking with me for a very long time. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 5
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 17,793
- Popularity
- #1,238
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 1,027
- ISBNs
- 211
- Languages
- 20
- Favorited
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