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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2007, 336 pages
Paperback:
May 2009, 336 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
Buy This Book
The story of Tessa, a young teenage girl who has only months to live ... a brilliantly crafted novel, heartbreaking yet life-affirming.
Tessa has just months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It’s her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is Sex. Released from the constraints of ‘normal’ life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Tessa’s feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, and her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallised in the precious weeks before Tessa’s time finally runs out.
Excerpt
Before I Die
I wish I had a boyfriend. I wish he lived in the wardrobe on a coat hanger. Whenever I wanted, I could get him out and he’d look at me the way boys do in films, as if I’m beautiful. He wouldn’t speak much, but he’d be breathing hard as he took off his leather jacket and unbuckled his jeans. He’d wear white pants and he’d be so gorgeous I’d almost faint. He’d take my clothes off too. He’d whisper, ‘Tessa, I love you. I really bloody love you. You’re beautiful’ – exactly those words – as he undressed me.
I sit up and switch on the bedside light. There’s a pen, but no paper, so on the wall behind me I write, I want to feel the weight of a boy on top of me. Then I lie back down and look out at the sky. It’s gone a funny colour – red and charcoal all at once, like the day is bleeding out.
I can smell sausages. Saturday night is always sausages. There’ll be mash and cabbage ...
During the first few chapters of Before I Die, adult readers will probably be asking themselves if this is really a book for them. After all, haven't we done our time with teenage angst already and do we really want to experience it from the viewpoint of a perceptive, witty, but not always likable dying teenager? Many of those who stick through the sometimes disjointed opening chapters (disjointed because the author is channeling a teenage voice) to reach the heart of the novel will answer with a resounding yes, and all but the most hardened of cynics will be reaching for the Kleenex by the final chapters...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
About the Author
First time author Jenny Downham caused quite a stir with
Before I Die, a novel targeted at teens with crossover
appeal for adults in general. Publisher David Fickling (part
of Random House), who also publish The Curious Incident
of the Dog in the Night-Time, are so enthusiastic about
the book that they rushed the 2007 hardcover into press in a
fraction of the time normally taken, and foreign rights have
been sold in at least 11 languages .
According to a June 2007 article in the London Times,
written a month before Before I Die published in the
UK, nobody is more surprised by the buzz surrounding the
book than Downham herself, a single...
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