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| View Larger Image | Before I Die
by Jenny Downham
| | List Price: | $15.99 | | Price: | $10.87 | | You Save: | $5.12 (32%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 50689 | | Studio: | David Fickling Books | | | Binding: | Hardcover | | Reading Level: | Young Adult | | Number Of Pages: | 336 | | Publication Date: | September 25, 2007 | | Publisher: | David Fickling Books |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
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. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 42 reviews)
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oh god, how sad i am 
Tessa is 16 and dying of cancer, and soon she is beyond caring. Suddenly she meets a boy, Adam, and her best friend becomes pregnant- things that suddenly she wants to live for. So she begins to live her life.
This book was quite hard to read- it hurt knowing she was going to die, since of course the book is called "before i die". However, it made the book stronger as a whole. I was thrilled with adam and tessa's relationship- though they fell in love quick, it was very believable. However, Zoey was a flaky friend until about halfway through the book when she got pregnant and suddenly became true to tessa. I didn't really understand that transistion, and that part wasn't too believeable.
But reading this book made me want to live my life to the fullest. Despite its flaws, it still shines. It's what a book is supposed to be- meaningful. Highly recommended.
August 30, 2008 | |
this is the best book i have ever read 
i have never read a book so sad like this. i wasnt prepared to cry so much the way i did but once i finished reading this book i couldnt stop crying.
this book is about a 16 year old girl named tessa, who has leukimia. she knows shes going to die and decides to write 10 things she wants to do before she dies. with the help of her best friend she accomplishes them all. the one thing she really wanted was love, and before she dies she experienced it with a boy who truly loved her.
i was taken aback by the way their love seemed so real and the way he took care of her. this boy took care of her even though he knew she was going to die and stayed with her till the very end.
i kept hoping she wouldnt die and that there would be a cure, but in the end she dies knowing the people she loves were around her and she accomplished everything she wanted to do.
tessa accomplished everything she wanted to do in a short span of time, whereas it can take a person a lifetime to acheive their goal.
i truly love this book and anyone that didnt like this book or didnt cry is cold hearted.
August 25, 2008 | |
A radically original novel
Pre review disclaimer: This book was recommended to me by "Amy" with the caveat that she'd heard it was excruciatingly sad and she knew readers who actually cried when they were talking about it. My morbid curiosity peaked, I decided to give the book a go after making provisions (though not really enough) for after-sad-book-reading with some funny books. Even with that buffer, I found myself feeling deeply melancholy while reading almost the entire second half of the novel. I don't really know what to say about this book because while it was good, it's just not my style to recommend sad books to people. So, I guess just read the review and if your interest is also peaked, give it a go. Just keep my little warnings in mind. So, if I haven't scared all of my readers off by now, onward to the review:
Before I Die (2007: David Fickling Books) is Jenny Downham's first novel (she trained as an actor and worked in alternative theater before writing according to her back flap bio). It is simultaneously life affirming and tragic.
Tessa Scott was diagnosed with cancer when she was twelve. Now sixteen, Tess is facing the unfathomable : her own death, much too soon and far too fast.
When the novel opens, Tess is in the midst of a self-imposed exile in her bedroom as she contemplates what dying really means when you haven't had much time to live and when your family tries to keep you optimistic and your best friend insists on acting like she understands.
But she can't. How can she possibly, when she has her whole life left? I hide under my hat again, just for a bit, because I'm going to miss breathing. And talking. And windows. I'm going to miss cake. And fish. I like fish. I like their little mouths going, open, shut, open.
And where I'm going, you can't take anything with you.
Then an idea forms. Tess has a list, ten things to do before she dies. Given the choice between dying quietly and taking this one last chance to live, Tess decides to go for it--asking her best friend Zoey to help her do it all.
The list starts with sex. When things don't go the way she had thought and she doesn't feel the way she had hoped, Tess considers giving up on the list altogether until she receives a new diagnosis.
How long can I stave it off? I don't know. All I know is that I have two choices--stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.
So that's exactly what Tess does. The items on the list range from the whimsical, like saying yes to everything for a day, to the poignant, like fame. The novel follows Tess as she completes the items on her list with varying levels of success and then through, literally, to the end.
Before I Die also spends a lot of time looking at Tessa's relationships with her family and her friends. It's interesting to see how her father and younger brother interact with Tess as well as how her absent mother tries to fit into the picture.
Tessa's friend Zoey, however, probably gets more page time than the family. Dealing with her own problems in the story, Zoey offers an interesting foil to Tess' situation. At the same time, their friendship provides the rather sobering reminder that, when someone is dying, it doesn't mean everyone else's lives can stop.
To borrow an old cliche, it's the relationship between Tess and her neighbor Adam that really pulls at a reader's heartstrings. As Tess and Adam try to connect, first as friends and then as something more, it's kind of heartbreaking to realize they can't always be together.
A lot of recently published novels are written in the present tense. That conceit is particularly appropriate in Before I Die since Tess can truly only live in the present. As I mentioned before, this novel doesn't end happily. But that doesn't make it less brilliant. Downham handles Tessa's death, narrated like the rest of the book in Tessa's voice, in a truly original way. I don't know that this book would be something to give someone who is already depressed over a death, but it does offer an interesting perspective on loss from a radically new perspective.
August 14, 2008 | |
Not amazing but emotional - I guess I can't really figure it out 
It was hard to complete this book without feeling some sort of empathy and pain for main character Tessa. By the end, I was heavily invested in her life and emotions. However, throughout the first half of the book, I was simply unable to connect with Tessa, enjoy the writing, or appreciate the events that happened to her.
What changed? I don't really know. But at some point, the book became at least somewhat reasonable and I felt sorry for Tessa, and by the very end I truly felt every painful, difficult moment. And yet... the book as a whole was not particularly good. Tessa is an annoying character, partly because she's an annoying person and partly because her changes and developments are fairly superficial. Other characters are kind of flat and hastily developed. Many of Tessa's hopes are really teen-stereotypical and kind of stupid. Dying teen wants to have sex before she goes, do drugs. Not particularly original, but maybe that's why the book got better once Tessa's hopes and dreams became somewhat deeper and grounded in a warped sense of reality.
The first half of this book is really bothersome, not least because of Tessa's annoying, stupid tendencies. But soon Tessa becomes a person I could relate to and feel. By the end, it was truly difficult not to cry or feel like something was dying inside. It was a difficult read - emotionally taxing in the end and painfully uncomfortable throughout. Some parts stand as emotional and powerful - others dull and stupid.
It's an okay book, I guess. In the end. It gives a pretty intense view of a dying teen, and while this could have been a much better book, it's still fairly important when it comes down to it. The simplicity may attract most teens, as will the fact that Tessa is stereotypically teen-ish. It's probably more for girls than for boys, but will touch all - teens and adults alike.
There may be some flaws with the book, and though I'd suggest it mainly for older teens, it's a touching novel about a teen who gives up fighting cancer and faces her death head-on with just a few requests. I feel like "Before I Die" could have been a lot more, but it will still serve its purpose as a quick, intense novel of teen death. And serve it well.
August 04, 2008 | |
Brilliant book
Tessa, 16, is going to die. She makes a list of things that she wants to do before she goes, from having sex to driving a car to taking her little brother shopping for anything he wants. What she does, as she goes through the list that she keeping adding to until the very end, is no less than live her full, rich life, and make the reader believe in how magic all the little moments we have really are.
Not a single moment rings trite or false in this book, from Tessa passive-aggressively calling the Samaritans after her colossally selfish and neglectful mother refuses to go with her to the hospital for a spinal tap (and hoping that Mom gets a bill for the call) to her alternatively exasperated and affectionate interactions with her father, brother and friend Zoey. The knowledge of how little time is left adds a poignance- and urgency at times- to Tessa's efforts to live. Tessa gets a lot in her last months, but you're never unaware of how much she's being cheated.
Death is sad and unfair, but the event itself is very much treated as a part of a life in this book. It's not scary, but it is extremely sorrowful. You will cry but you're left with joy at the life Tessa had (and maybe the one you've got), not devastating heartbreak.
This "YA" of 38 thinks it's the best book she's read in a long, long time. I couldn't put it down and can't wait to read it again.
June 19, 2008 | |
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