Synopsis: Tessa is sixteen. Time isn’t exactly on her side, and she’s still got an awful lot of living to do…

Review: ‘I wish I had a boyfriend.’ The first sentence of this remarkable novel could be the utterance of any sixteen year old girl. And that’s just what Tessa is – a normal teenager – only with the added complication that she is dying of cancer. She has battled with the disease since the age of twelve and by the time the novel begins, it is already certain that she is not going to recover. This is what makes Before I Die  so original: it is not the story of someone’s battle with a life threatening illness, it is the story of what happens after the battle has been lost, where the conclusion is definite from the very outset.

The plot of this novel is based loosely around a list that Tessa has devised and we follow her as she marks off the things, one by one, that she wishes to experience before she dies. Some are dangerous, some are taboo, some are philosophical but they are all a believable representation of what a teenage girl might perceive as ‘living.’ The publishers have described this book as ‘life-affirming’ and there is certainly a deal of truth to this: the story is centred around Tessa’s life, that is, all that happens before the actual moment of her death, from her desperation to cram a lifetime’s experiences into a few short months to only brief snatches of consciousness as the cancer takes its hold on her. Tessa begins to see beauty in simple things and through Jenny Downham’s descriptive, lyrical prose the reader is invited to share the wonder and privilege of seeing the world through the eyes of someone who is about to leave it. We share with Tessa her freedom from society’s constraints. What does it matter if she breaks the law? What does it matter if she puts her own life in danger when her own death is already so inevitably imminent?

Interesting too is the study of those affected by this situation: the parent in denial, desperately clinging to anything that might prolong his daughter’s life and the childish, candid observations of her eleven year old brother. The book does not shy away from exploring the myriad of emotions – guilt, fear, anger, to name only a few – that go hand in hand with such circumstances, and it does so without the sentimentality that might be expected when dealing with such a difficult subject.

 Linguistic quirks and references to popular culture place this book at the heart of the world currently inhabited by teenagers and its frank, and at times almost nonchalant, discussion of crime, sex and death assures that it does not preach or patronise. This truly is an extraordinary debut novel.

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Robert Collins' review in The Guardian

2007-06-05