Jenny Downham: Before I Die
There are few spoilers needed for a book called Before I Die, few warnings either that you’re going to slowly become immured by the text until with the inevitable ending, you are choked by tears. Inevitable because the narrator is certainly on the last stages of her life’s journey and is meticulously planning what can and can’t be managed within the last limits of her days: a ticky list of experiences (drugs, driving, sex are the predictable ones at the outset), not least of which is “falling in love”. This list is both the most artificial and most authentic engine for the action in the book and never fails until 16 yr old Tessa leaves the pages.
The narration, as first-person, forces us up close with Tessa, breathing alongside her (even for her, at times), immersed in her head and alongside her incredibly adult thinking. Arguably this could be where some readers might find the credibility wanes - Tessa seems able to express some of the truths that are barely graspable in seventy or eighty years of life, and with a readiness that still struggles to understand more, know more, experience more.
The narrative voice is certainly that of a young woman but as the balance of life tips, the dispossession of it invites a counterpoint of self-possession in the narration. The words and spaces on the page become more spare and also more telling in the closing chapters, Tessa’ voice more distinctive and sharpened, but also less like herself as she sheds the world. Yet somehow we are kept emotionally connected throughout the slow disintegration of connections in Tessa’s life and body. Throughout Tessa searches for and finds life and death in miniscule - her best friend’s pregnancy, the arrival of winter, old holiday graffiti which has been painted over - and senses the full vibrancy and energy of life, tasting it herself. Rather predictably for these times, there is no mention of God or the afterlife, other than in a brief exchange with a nurse and references to the yawning emptiness of the cosmos - it is the life lived here and now that is being relayed, and that is where its truth can be found: in the friendships and loves Tessa has amongst her family and friends, the in-loved-ness too.
This is a tremendous book for any teenager to read (and any adult too): it is not sentimental or schmaltzy, not overburdened with words or explanations or introspection (which when it comes, comes in slivers that are not too laced with poignancy). It was well worth the rush into publication that made David Fickling contract two years into six months of editing and promotion.
***** (Five stars)
The narration, as first-person, forces us up close with Tessa, breathing alongside her (even for her, at times), immersed in her head and alongside her incredibly adult thinking. Arguably this could be where some readers might find the credibility wanes - Tessa seems able to express some of the truths that are barely graspable in seventy or eighty years of life, and with a readiness that still struggles to understand more, know more, experience more.
The narrative voice is certainly that of a young woman but as the balance of life tips, the dispossession of it invites a counterpoint of self-possession in the narration. The words and spaces on the page become more spare and also more telling in the closing chapters, Tessa’ voice more distinctive and sharpened, but also less like herself as she sheds the world. Yet somehow we are kept emotionally connected throughout the slow disintegration of connections in Tessa’s life and body. Throughout Tessa searches for and finds life and death in miniscule - her best friend’s pregnancy, the arrival of winter, old holiday graffiti which has been painted over - and senses the full vibrancy and energy of life, tasting it herself. Rather predictably for these times, there is no mention of God or the afterlife, other than in a brief exchange with a nurse and references to the yawning emptiness of the cosmos - it is the life lived here and now that is being relayed, and that is where its truth can be found: in the friendships and loves Tessa has amongst her family and friends, the in-loved-ness too.
This is a tremendous book for any teenager to read (and any adult too): it is not sentimental or schmaltzy, not overburdened with words or explanations or introspection (which when it comes, comes in slivers that are not too laced with poignancy). It was well worth the rush into publication that made David Fickling contract two years into six months of editing and promotion.
***** (Five stars)