Dear Evan Hansen: My Thoughts - Ana Olson

    The novel Dear Evan Hansen is based on the Tony award-winning musical. It is the story of highschoolers Evan Hansen and Connor Murphy. They are not exactly friends: Evan and Connor both tend to keep to themselves. Evan is working on “putting himself out there,” and starts asking some people to sign the cast on his arm. Connor ends up being the only one who signs it. As a project for therapy, Evan is supposed to write himself letters, Connor steals one of Evan's letters. A little while after this, Connor commits suicide. When this first happened in the book, it gives very little reason. I wanted to keep reading to know, why did Connor commit suicide, what role is Evan going to play in relation to this tragic event? With him, Evan’s letter is found, and is thought to be his suicide note, adressed to Evan. Because of this, Connor’s parents meet with Evan and see that Connor signed his cast. This leads them to believe that Evan and Connor were close friends that they just didn’t know about. Evan talks to the Murphys, including Connor’s sister who Evan has a crush on. and once he sees how much this friendship means to them, that Connor wasn’t as alone as they thought, he decides not to tell them that he wasn’t that close with Connor.

          Evan starts spending more time at the Murphy’s house, they start asking him more questions about Connor and Evan’s relationship with him. This leads Evan to lie and say that he and Connor sent emails to each other all the time. When Mr. and Mrs. Murphy asks to see some of the emails, Evan and an acquaintance of his, Jared Kleinman, create fake emails between Evan and Connor. Reading this, as Evan just keeps digging a deeper hole for himself, I wondered why he does this. Why not just come clean before it becomes a bigger issue? Connor’s death becomes the so-called talk of the town. Alana Beck reaches out to Evan to create an organization called “The Connor Project,” which helps show people that they are not alone and holds a fundraiser basically for a memorial for Connor.

Evan continues with the lie about how close he was with Connor. Evan also starts to become closer to the Murphys. To them, he is helping them cope with the loss of their son and it seems as if Connor is still alive inside Evan. The Murphys “painted me as a hero, but underneath the mask I’m a monster”(304). Evan is completely aware of how deep he is in. He knows how much it will hurt them to admit the truth. 

One part of this book that I found particularly interesting is how it is told from the perspective of both Evan and Connor. At first I was confused when the perspective changed. Throughout the book it randomly switches between first person Connor, and Evan. So when reading Connor’s parts, it shows his thoughts essentially as a ghost. He is watching what is happening after his death, yet still hearing his thoughts on things. This shows what was going on in his head and provides some background to why he committed suicide, is views towards it now, and what he thinks about his family and other people in his life.

Overall, I do recommend this book. I have listened to the songs from the musical before and so I found it cool to see the context of them in the story. I do not however recommend this to someone who gets secondhand embarrassment from novels. There were quite a few scenes where it felt awkward to read, and there were also times when I felt like I wanted to tell Evan to just communicate and tell the truth.