Review
Tessa is sixteen-years-old. She's been living with and
fighting leukemia for much of her life, and now her body is
failing. Precipitated by her illness her parent's marriage
has fallen apart - her father is in denial, her mother is
absent from her life most of the time, and her younger
brother swings from loving her obsessively to just wishing
she'd hurry up and die. Meanwhile, Tessa's got some living
to do, and at the top of her Top-10 "Before I Die" list is
to have sex, followed by try drugs; and who better to lead
her through her list than her fast-living best friend, Zoey
who exhorts Tessa to "live fast, die young" and have "a
good-looking corpse".
During the first few chapters of
Before I Die, adult
readers will probably be asking themselves if this is really
a...
Beyond the Book
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 mother...
