Author: Jenny Downham
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!
Tessa dies at the end. This novel isn't about whether she'll survive, but about what she does before she's no more. And I didn't find anything in it to like. Except maybe the cover! Yeah, I know I typically pan the cover (on those rare occasions when I have anything at all to say about it) because covers are rarely the work of the author, and they rarely have anything to do with the content of the novel, but in this case, surprisingly, the cover actually was appropriate.
I could see the model being Tess. You couldn't really see her hair, but it looked like it might be missing. Her face is in sharp relief against the out-of-focus background and it looks haunted and in pain. It's brilliant. That's obviously why Big Publishing$trade; decided to change it for one that has a fluffy dandelions on it, bless their little haute couture cotton socks.
Before I Die was Jenny Downham's debut novel. I read and really enjoyed You Against Me by this author (it was one of the very first books I reviewed on this blog), so I was curious to compare that with something else of hers, especially since it deals with a similar theme to two other novels I've reviewed recently: Virgin by Radhika Sanghani, and Unintentional Virgin by A J Bennett.
This novel is written in first person PoV which makes zero sense. The writer is dead. There is no mention of her keeping a journal, much less recording observations of her daily life down to exact conversations and, for example, every single thing she experienced while under the influence of mushrooms.
This was the first thing which turned me off of this novel, because it was so glaringly and patently fake from the outset. I could never believe it. Was I expected, for example, to accept that even when she was rotting in her bed, dying, incapable of moving or even speaking, that she was typing this out on her computer keyboard? I mean seriously, step back for once, and look at this from outside that cozy little make-believe box, and honestly see just how pathetic and absurd this truly is.
I know writers labor under the sad delusion that they're making it more immediate and more accessible when they put you right up there front and center, in the main character's shoes, but that doesn't work on me, especially when the character is supposed to die! It's a ridiculous conceit and it simply makes me laugh because it's so ludicrous, which I'm sure is the last emotion Downham wanted a reader to feel. Worse than that, this 1PoV approach makes it "all about me all the time", and that's the very last perspective to present for a character who was profoundly selfish and thoughtless to begin with.
Yes, Tessa, I'm talking about you. Tessa's desire to lose her virginity at least has some sort of rationale. Unlike the other two novels where it's the central theme, in this one it's only a small part of a larger picture. Tessa is dying of cancer. She's created a list of ten things (which expands to more) to do before she dies, and this is number one.
I found myself wondering why a young girl would make this particular item number one, but I found myself wondering more what the other things were. They turned out to be rather disappointing and she evidenced little interest and less effort in pursuing them, preferring instead to sit around either moping or lost in regretful thoughts that she wasn't going to get them done. Excuse me? How about getting off your idle ass and doing them instead of sitting around bemoaning your hopelessness? In the end she simply gave up on the list, revealing how fake and manufactured it had been all along.
One of the items was to try drugs, another was to break the law. I can see how a person in her position would not care too much about her future. Even if she died from a drug overdose, she wouldn't be losing very much, but if she broke the law and was imprisoned, that would make her last days rather stunted, wouldn't it? There seems to be less thought in the list than there does an author's need to be controversial and maybe win a book medal for it.
Indeed, a repeated theme in the novel was Tessa experiencing something she's never noticed before, and I could only think how pathetic, and limited, and blinkered she must have been to have gone through life without ever noticing how a tree trunk feels, how grass feels between your toes, how beautiful and fragile birds are. Seriously, did you never open your eyes once for your first twelve years, Tessa, because you've left it way too late if you're just now opening them.
Or does Downham think there's anything new in what she's writing here - something no one else but she has ever thought of or seen? Yes, that's how you win Newberry medals, by treating your readers like they're blind and clueless, but but I got news for writers like this: I do the things Tessa does, and I do them every day. It's wonderful, and it's not some magical secret only the dying can know. It's not as revelatory as Downham has evidently deluded herself into swallowing. She's not the first person ever to think about these things, much less to notice them. All anyone need do is open their eyes to what's around them.
Tessa's law-breaking venture turned out to be shoplifting, for which she got caught, but she was let go with a warning. She broke the law again later, taking her dad's car (without having a license to drive) to the beach where she went as a child. This a girl who claims she wants to take a train ride as part of her list, but instead she effectively steals her dad's car, inconveniencing and worrying the only person who truly cares about her and is actually busting his ass trying to help her. Stupid much, Tessa? The drugs came in the form of mushrooms collected by her neighbor, Adam, a young guy who's taking care of his mother, a woman who was debilitated by the loss of her husband in an accident. Keep her in mind for later and an astounding exhibition of pure selfishness on Tessa's part.
Adam is the trope male love interest, of course, so naturally he has a motorbike and leather jacket. Barf. Why not just name Tessa 'Eve' and have done with it? Her bucket list could be the temptation, and her death, the expulsion from Eden. Paradise Upchucked. It was a bit sad that even in a novel such as this, trope guy has to put in an appearance. Girls are useless without them, aren't they - at least, that's the vision of far too many YA authors, all of them female themselves, strangely enough. Thus is Tessa's family sold out for a stranger on the shore.
Then Tessa isn't a likable person. Not at all. She's selfish and manipulative. She's combative and mean. She uses and abuses people. She cares not a whit for the inconvenience or feelings of others, because it's all Tess all the time and nothing and no one else matters. There are no redeeming features in this character, no matter how much you think you can justify it by shamelessly brandishing the C card in front of your readers. Tess is an angry and resentful teenager who sees no reason to give life a break when it gave her none and who acts out accordingly and consequences be damned. Why should she care when it's others who must pay for her free ride?
Look at it this way: If this novel had been exactly the same, except that Tessa had not had cancer, but had died instead at the end in an accident, or from a drug overdose or by violence, would this novel have got anywhere near the tear-stained reviews it has? I submit that it most certainly would not, and that tells you all you need to know about it. Instead of being praised and cried over, she would have been denounced, and loudly.
Her problem really isn't so much that she's dying, it's that she doesn't know exactly how long she has. Even condemned prisoners know when their last day will be. Tessa doesn't and in this regard she's no different from a person who's lived to a ripe old age. They know death is right around a corner, they just don't know precisely around which corner it awaits them. We're actually all in that boat, but while most of us have hope of a long life before it happens, too many of us do not.
Tessa has the grave disadvantage of not having lived a long life before her number comes up, which makes me question her sorry habit of wasting so many of her days wallowing. Sadly, even when she wises up to this and decides to take the reins, she takes them only half-heartedly, and it by no means makes her a better person. All her relationships, particularly with her dad and her best friend Zoey, are roller-coaster, one day loving them, the next fighting them resentfully. He behavior towards her father is monstrous and inexcusable.
This is the guy who is taking care of her, as he has done for the last four years. He quit his job to do this (no explanation as to how the hell he manages to go for four years out of work and yet the family isn't even remotely in dire financial straits). Tessa's mom abandoned her when Tessa got sick, and now barely is involved in her life at all. Her mother is a loser and a useless appendage at best, and yet Tessa treats her with far more respect and regard than ever she gives her father. Tessa is, quite simply, a jerk.
So Tessa created this bucket list, but she seems less interested in doing things which are truly meaningful than she is in checking things off the list just for the sake of it, and just for shock value. Utility or real value doesn't enter into it. She shares this situation with Karma in Unintentional Virgin a little bit. Karma's list was fake, culled from the Internet, so she had as little invested in it as Tessa seems to.
When I had a good idea of how I was going to rate this, I read a bunch of reviews, pos and neg, just to see if I missed anything worth talking about, and I really had not, but I did notice one short review which berated this novel for being all about sex. I don't know which novel that reviewer read, but it was not this one! The "deflowering" occurs around page 24, and then there isn't another real visitation with sex for two hundred pages. Clearly that reviewer was delusional. If you're going to pan this, fine, but at least pan it for its failures, not for your own sheltered and prudish views.
The first sex episode was when Tessa and Zoey picked up two guys at random at a club, went back to their place and had sex. It wasn't anything at all, and it wasn't earth-moving, and it was dealt with simply and quickly and then it was over. Zoey continued to see her guy, but Tessa did not. Zoey became pregnant. This was nothing but pure and simple amateurish 'trite in the raw'. Oh, thinks newbie author, I'm killing off the main protag, therefore I should bring in a new baby and win a Newberry. Barf.
A classic example of how bad Tessa is - how bad this novel is - is when she gets a nose-bleed right before she's supposed to go on a date with Adam. Her mother is there that night, and is completely and utterly useless, but Tessa herself is also useless. Neither of them has any idea how to deal with the nose-bleed - and this includes the patient who has been touted to us hitherto as the expert on all things medical - because she has to be.
Never once do they think of calling an ambulance. In normal circumstances that would be entirely inappropriate, but here it would be the sensible thing to do. But why be sensible here when the rest of this novel isn't? Despite all of her thoughts being focused on Adam and on her date with him that night, never once does selfish Tessa think of calling or texting him and putting off the date, or of asking him to drive them to the hospital!
When he shows up at the door for his date, and does offer to drive them, this guy whom she supposedly loves is pushed away and turned out. And so much does he love Tessa that he never shows up at the hospital. Instead, this dickhead lards up Tessa's route home with banners bearing her name. This is not how you write realistic fiction, this is how you sell out your integrity to win a medal to get a movie made. This part made me truly sick and flushed away everything this author was purportedly trying to do here. This is when I honestly rated this novel warty.
When I decided to ditch it unfinished was the very next chapter, where Tessa demands from her father that Adam move in with her. Fuck Adam's mother who needs him, this is Tessa and her needs supersede anyone else's because she's the big T with the big C. Tessa herself says, "Every night he goes home to keep his mother safe. He sleeps just metres away from me...." That's how appallingly selfish she is. She already has him nearly all the time, and he lives literally next door, but that can't possibly be enough for Princess Tessa. When she can't get what she wants, she rushes off upstairs slamming doors like the total child that she is.
That was it for me. Check please I'm outta here. This novel was genital warty. I don't care what happens in the last 100 pages. You should ditch it too, and go read You Against Me instead. That's something I never would have done had I read this first.
