Customer Reviews

Before I Die

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Before I Die by Jenny Downham was the most difficult book I've ever had to read. Ever harder to review. I finished it a month ago, but it's taken me this much time to allow some of the ache to go away before I could get it down. It's the story of Tessa, who is 17 and dying of cancer. She lives with her father and younger brother and occasionally sees her estranged mother. Tessa has made of a list of the things that she wants to do before she dies. Many of the things on the list are stereotypical of the average teen: have sex, try drugs. Others are deeper: fall in love, not say no to anyone for an entire day. She completes much of her list, but the ramifications of some of them aren't what she hoped for. Sex with someone she doesn't know or love doesn't fulfill her; drugs are strange and take away what little happiness she has in life. Tessa's father struggles with his daughter's impending death. He feeds her organic food and vitamins in the unspoken hope that somehow, something will change. He and Tessa fight each other as she tries to live what little life she has left to the fullest and he tries to protect her. How do you put limits on or ground a teenager who is going to die? How can you keep her from experiences when all she wants is to feel? She swoops in and out of depression, refusing the leave the bed for days, then suddenly wanting adventure. Her best friend gets pregnant, her parents start moving closer to each other, she falls in love with the boy next door; all sorts of exciting experiences show themselves just as she can't be there to see how any of it turns out. I was shocked to find out that the author of this book was a middle-aged woman; she speaks so authentically as a teenage girl. This book is heartbreaking and uplifting all at once. Tessa is so real that I found myself hoping against hope that somehow the ending would change. But her peace and acceptance toward death was moving. As Tessa's soul drifts away on the final page, so do the words. As the mother of teenage children, this was an especially hard read, but I'm glad I did. Tessa discovers that life is worth living the best you can, even if the best you can is only 17 years.

Before I Die will truly knock the breath out of you. Tess, the heroine, is dying of leukemia. Rather than spending her final days in bed, she makes a list of things she wants to do before she dies and sets about to accomplish them.

Such a simple premise, such a complicated book. Making a resolution to say "yes" to everything is hard work, Tess finds-- it brings priorities like friends and family into conflict. It does require some suspension of disbelief to believe that the boy who will love her just so happens to be the boy she doesn't know who lives next door, but, given his character, I'll take the suspension and run with it. This is truly a "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" book, except Tess does realize how valuable the people around her are-- they are the last voices she hears as she drifts off into the inevitable end.

Oddly, the male characters are better drawn than the female supporting characters. One wouldn't expect such a sharp dichotomy, but it seems as if the author poured all of her narrative energies into Tess and didn't have enough for the other women: Tess' mom makes rare appearances, and the character of her best friend, Zoey, is rather flat. Zoey in particular should be drawn more strongly because she represents vitality and life but also consequences; she is a person living life chaotically, without a list, so to speak.

The novel is heartbreaking (even to my rather gruff heart), but it doesn't bog you in depression; rather, it makes you want to find something to do and just do it. The spareness of Tess' life, made so by her illness, allows her to enrich her remaining time with meaning and fulfillment. In her final moments, we know that her plan worked.

Tessa is 16 and dying of cancer. She knows that she has only months to live and she creates a list of things she wants to experience before she dies: having sex, trying drugs and falling in love being just three of them. This is not your usual teen lit fare. It is a very moving book that feels like a realistic account of a teenager struggling to come to terms with the fact that her life will be over almost before it's begun. Sometimes Tessa is self-pitying, angry or apathetic - but she is also real and brave and you care about her.

This is a quick book to read - it took me a day. It's fairly predictable and aside from Tessa, the characters are pretty sketchy. However its simplicity also makes it feels more genuine, as if it really was penned by a 16 year old. It makes you think about and appreciate your own friends, your family - your very life.

Despite the subject matter it doesn't endorse casual sex (indeed, the potential consequences are very clear!) nor drug use. I wouldn't hesitate to give it to a teenager to read, although I would probably hand over a large box of tissues along with it. It's the kind of book that touches your heart.

We know three pages into "Before I Die" that sixteen-year-old Tessa won't survive her leukemia--and that there's plenty she still wants from life. So she makes a list and vows to do everything on it before she dies.

Like most teenagers, Tessa is at odds with her parents and angsty about how life's shortchanged her. At first her ranting and left-field demands seem too adolescent. Isn't the looming presence of death supposed to mature her beyond her years?

But that's precisely the kind of "dying-young" trope that Downham admirably resists throughout the novel. Tessa burns up a maddening number of days moping when we think she should be fulfilling her dreams. She finally pushes herself to face facts: "I have two choices--stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living."

Downham escapes the common shortcoming of many young adult novels in which the only character that ever really matters to us is the speaker. In this novel, Tessa's relationships are so dynamic that we ache with her at the thought of losing them. Throughout the book, their interactions thrum with tension and tenderness.

There's Cal, the tactless younger brother who helpfully explains the process of decomposition. And Zoe, the careless best friend who has her own troubles to wake her up to life. There's Dad in denial, determined to save Tessa through organic foods and fierce hugs. Mom, who cut out about the time of Tessa's diagnosis and who remains slightly outside of the helping circle (without becoming a monster). And there's Adam, the blessing of love and vulnerability that lands next door to Tessa at the crucial time.

And where a lesser writer might swill us readers around in dying-girl thought soup, Downham lets the telling detail speak for Tessa's feelings instead. Her anger comes to us through her as she gives herself points for the imagined deaths of healthy strangers: "One point for the lump on her neck, raw and pink as a crab's claw." We feel her hunger for life as she licks an ice-cream stick until "the wood rasps my tongue." We know her true well-wishes for those she loves as she dreams up a replacement for her boyfriend, a "girl with lovely curves and breath like oranges."

There's nothing treacly here. It's a brave, humanist novel, one that leaves the reader gulping the polluted, precious air of Tessa's world with a passion and astonishment almost as great as Tessa's. Downham earns for us the catharsis of the ending, for her characters come to take up real space in our hearts. Up until the last word, I think, we hope that Tessa will somehow, against all odds, keep breathing.

When she doesn't, we mourn for Tessa just as she wished: by remembering her.

I am not sure how to review this book. I think I hated the beginning and started liking it more towards the end. I liked the idea of the list of things to do before she dies. I dont understand the sex scenes though. First of all, they were definitely graphic and shocking for a YA novel and were slightly unbelievable for such young, inexperinced kids. In one paragraph Tessa would go from the young, immature teenager she was to a sex crazed mature older women. I was extremely uncomfortable with it.

As good as some of the things on the list were - drugs, shoplifting...the part that was unbelieveable to me was why didnt Tessa want to be a NORMAL teenager? Why didnt she want to smoke cigarettes, hang out with a bunch of girls at the mall, fail a test, go to the prom etc etc etc? There is no mention of Tessa having a normal teenager's life at all, and I felt that created a huge hole in the story.

Character wise, I would have liked to see her father developed more, since he plays such a prominent role in her life. Her brother Cal was by far my favorite character. His personality was developed more than Tessa. I found him to be funny and charming, and it was his lines at Tessa's deathbed that brought tears to my eyes.

Overall, it was a good story and a quick read and I was interested in the first person perspective of a dying teenager until the end. But Tessa's character flaws and lack of being a "real" teenager, or her desire to be one, caused me to only give this story 2 stars.

This is one of the best books I have read in my life. When I read this book, I wasn't expecting it to affect me so much and to strike me on such a personal and emotional level. The last pages absolutely make the book. This book has stayed with me for months and months, I still can't get over it. I recommend this book to everyone, along with lots and lots of tissues. "Before I Die" is absolutely phenomenal.

For a book aimed primarily at young teens, I would be hard pushed to buy it for someone's birthday etc. I brought it on a beach holiday with me and even then found it hard going amongst all the sun, sea and sand.

The story features around Tessa, a 15-year-old girl with terminal cancer, who has a list of 10 things to do before she dies. Losing her virginity, doing drugs, experiencing things she'll never get to experience. But other shocks come along at the same time, things that she never expects - her mum and dad get back together, her best friend gets pregnant etc.

It's shockingly well written, and I found myself turning page after page, and finishing it very quickly (as I do when I'm on a beach for up to six hours a day). The finale was particularly hard to read, which is glaringly obvious, but it's written from Tessa's point of view, and that makes it even harder to read.

In my version of the book, there's an extra bit at the back, an interview with the author, on how she came up with the character and events, and it's quite an interesting way how she writes, she starts with a bunch of ideas, totally disjointed at times, but she manages to thread them all together.

Before I Die is an incredibly sad book, and I'll be recommending it.

I finished this book yesterday, and it is a truly heartfelt story. I read the 2007 edition with a different cover.
In my opinion it portrayed the feelings and emotions of a dying young girl perfectly.
As a parent, I understand why her parents allowed her, although not always happy about it, to complete her list. I think at that stage you would do anything to keep your child happy - no matter how outrageous.
Also, only when death is on your doorstep would you be able to appreciate everything around you with such clarity, as Tessa did. Excellently written and described by Jenny Downham.
First time in a very, very long time that I have read a book without a single spelling error.
Tears started spilling down my cheeks half-way through the book and I sobbed long after.

Jenny Downham could not have known the effect her simple and sparse words could have on the unsuspecting reader. In a style not unlike Tove Jansson("The Summer Book"-a good start), Ms.Downham says so much without need of superfluous word waste. This book enraptured me and took my breath away. Indeed I longed to give Tessa the breaths I realized I was wasting and had to shake myself to remember Tessa isn't real. Ms.Downham ushers in so many issues of teenage reality with such acceptance that I reeled with trying to understand how my young daughter will soon enough face her choices. Young adults would, I believe, be able to accept this adult's version of their concerns as accurate and inspirational. And then there is the cancer. I would give this book to anyone facing disease threatened mortality. Tessa completely disproves Mr. Twain's utterances on "youth being wasted on the young" and reminds us all that life should not be wasted on the living. Though I still feel in mourning for Tessa, sympathy for her friends and family, I am inspired to anticipate Jenny Downham's next story with the assurance of reading a fantastic novel. Write on Ms. Downham!

Most reviews for this book were so good, that I purchased it, but I was bored after a few chapters. The reading level is very elementary and the story didn't hold my interest at all. Maybe it gets better towards the end, but I won't be taking the time to find out.