Book cover image from Amazon.com.
BEFORE I DIE
1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Downham, Jenny. 2007. BEFORE I DIE. Great Britain: David Fickling Books. ISBN 9780385751551.
2. PLOT SUMMARY
"I want to die in my own way. It’s my illness, my death, my choice.” Tessa Scott creates her own “bucket list”…ten things she wants to accomplish before the cancer that she has fought for four years takes her life. At sixteen, and knowing that she has but a few months to live, Tessa doesn’t worry about the consequences of the actions on her list. She begins with having sex (and with a stranger), using drugs, shoplifting, taking her father’s car, saying yes to everything in a single day, being interviewed on the radio (to become famous), and falling in love. Completing the list isn’t possible: holding her pregnant friend’s baby, finishing school, travelling the world, and …growing up. By working on the items on the list, she has a reason to live. It is in the living that she begins to be able to accept the inevitable end of her life.
3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
So much comes together to make this book work. The book is written in the first person. Every part of the story is seen through Tessa’s eyes from discovering that her cancer has progressed to having such a bloody nose she must go to the hospital.
The characters are written realistically and their emotions are understandable. Tessa’s dad is compassionate and lonely since he quit his job in order to care for his ill daughter. Her mother has left the family, but is tentatively coming back to help Tessa as her illness progresses. There is even a bit of pity for her when she takes Tessa to the hospital because of her bloody nose but can’t tell when Tessa’s last blood transfusion was because she wasn’t there. Just when it seems as if her maternal side will not kick in, she keeps Tessa’s attention away from what is going on during a procedure by telling her about the family all trying oysters for the first time. Cal, Tessa’s little brother, goes through a range of emotions from crying because he doesn’t want his sister to die to being mad at her and telling her, “I hope you die while I am at school!..And I hope it bloody hurts! And I hope they bury you somewhere horrible like the fish shop or the dentist’s!”
Reading about duvets being pulled up over someone in bed, living in a flat, having a Mum, falling on your “arse”, calling a sexual experience a “shag”, and retrieving a “fag from a box” to smoke all lead to the revelation that the story is taking place in England. The setting allows for a richness of language and , according to Kirkus reviews, “Lucid language makes a painful journey bearable, beautiful, and transcendent.”
“Most memorably, listeners hear Tessa's unspoken words-snippets of inner monologues, dreams and flashes of memories that drift into her fading consciousness as she lays dying (Publisher’s Weekly).” The pages of the last chapter show more and more space, and as Tessa’s thoughts begin to muddle with the words she hears spoken around her, she leaves this Earth. Having the character die makes this novel even more realistic to all who read it, and keeps its message about the frailty of life going on long after the reader finishes the book.
4. AWARDS AND HONORS
2007 Booklist Editors' Choice: Books for Youth
2007 Kirkus Best Young Adult Books
2007 Publishers Weekly Best Children's Books
2008 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults
2009 Tayshas High School Reading List
5. REVIEW EXCERPTS
From Kirkus Reviews, labeled a starred review: "Lucid language makes a painful journey bearable, beautiful and transcendent."
From the New York Times Book Review’s John Burnham Schwartz, "This may sound too depressing for words, but it is only one indication of the inspired originality of Before I Die, by Jenny Downham, that the reader can finish its last pages feeling thrillingly alive ... I don't care how old you are. This book will not leave you."
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