Before I Die
- by: Jenny Downham
- Published by: Listening Library
- New York, 2007
- 7 discs (7 hrs, 10 min)
- 5Q 4p J+ S
Sixteen year old Tessa realizes her young life is abruptly ending. Leukemia forces her to spend most days in bed recovering from a procedure or fighting for strength. In the days ahead, Tessa decides to go on living rather than giving into death. With the help of her freespirited friend, Zoe, Tessa builds a list of things to experience in her last few months of life. Her intended actions include sex, drugs, shoplifting, traveling, and driving. As she carries out her list, she discovers other aspects more important such as getting her parents back together, falling in love, and making the final days of her life more memorable.
Readers will be intrigued with Tessa’s outlook on death and how she copes with the inevitable. In the final chapters, Tessa describes the last ideas and images running through her mind. Teens will find strength in Tessa’s story and see how important it is to live each day to the fullest. Readers will reevaluate their relationships with their families as they see Tessa’s father focusing his life on caring for his daughter, and her brother attempting to make light of the situation through humor as he deals with his grief. Evident themes include life lessons learned through grief, pain, fear, and coping with terminal illness.
In listening to the novel’s audio version, readers can experience the Tessa’s physical actions as well as the monologue of her thoughts. The narrator, Charlotte Parry, does an excellent job of taking on the characters’ voices and relating their thoughts and emotions while building meaningful relationships. The sorrowful tone will leave the reader aching for Tessa and her family and friends, but somehow revived in the realization of life’s preciousness as Tessa finds peace with death. The author’s vividly detailed style and intense descriptions of Tessa’s symptoms and disease stages give readers a true look into living life with a fatal illness and finding strength in sadness and evaluating life’s priorities.
This novel left me teary eyed and missing Tessa. It is difficult to read about dying characters, especially young individuals. I found it helpful to listen to the novel with some of the vocabulary used by the author. Hearing the words in context made the context more comprehendable and character interactions more emotional. With the story set in England, dialect played a tremendous role in characterization. Hearing the “voices” of the characters could hep readers develop a clear picture of each character. Teen readers will find appeal in plot elements of which they can easily relate, such as love relationships, friendships, sibling rivalry, and dealing with parents. Many teens wonder what it would be like to explore difficult situations. Tessa’s experiences allow readers to evaluate these implicit values for themselves. Teen girls may be more likely to relate to the main character; however, male readers may also have questions about death and dying. The author uses fictional characters to accurately examine life situations that could happen to any teen.
I would recommend this title to teens ages fourteen and above. Tessa is sixteen, so even younger teens may enjoy reading about a character somewhat older than themselves. I would not discourage younger readers from exploring this novel; however, the death of the main character and the relationships among characters may be suitable for older audiences. Death and dying is a hard issue to handle with teens, and this book would be an excellent fictional account giving teens insight into these tough situations.
The cover art shows Tessa looking out from a blurred black and white graphic background as she stares into the readers’ eyes, looking serious to what lies ahead. Young readers, especially teen girls, would be drawn to this cover and intrigued to read/listen to the novel. This book brings a whole new meaning to the saying … “Live Like You Were Dying.”
