Before I Die by Jenny Downham

Title: Before I Die
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.

You Against Me by Jenny Downham

Title: You Against Me
Author: Jenny Downham
Publisher: David Fickling
Rating: WORTHY!

Despite being proffered as young-adult fiction, this novel contains very mature themes, language, references to violence, smoking, alcohol, drugs, rape and sex. Having said that, it's a real rip-snorter! Yes, you heard me right and I'll bet no other review has dared to say that about this novel!

I was half-way sold after seeing the title; then came the back-cover blurb, and that first line. There was no hope for me after that. I read some 140 pages the first day, and that's with working full time and running the kids around. Or they were giving me the run-around, one or t'other.

The book is set in England and written by an English author (who has also had some acting experience), so I was right at home from page one. Actually from page nine. Downham (or her publisher) chose to number the pages right from the start, so chapter one appears on page nine.

I've posted a glossary of English terms for anyone who needs a reference.

This book is kick-A. There's Mikey, who we meet on line one page one (or nine) with the very first sentence: "Mikey couldn't believe his life". Yes, his life is a sentence. At least, that's how he feels, and he does feel, and strongly, too.

Mikey's 18 and lives with his absentee mother - that is she lives there but she's always got her abs on the settee. Or in bed. Her real problem is alcohol. Mikey appears to be the only person bringing home the bacon. Not that there's ever any bacon or any other kind of food in the 'flat' in the projects where the family lives. Dad's never mentioned. Mikey has a younger sister, Holly, who's 8 and who is missing school big time, and another sister Karyn, who's 15 and therein lies the main problem: we learn that Karyn was raped and now daren't leave the house.

Mikey is so angry that he heads over to Tom Parker's house to ding him with a 'spanner' in revenge for his assault on Karyn. He fails to meet Tom. Instead, he meets Eleanor (Ellie), Tom's disaffected sister who is dealing with the rape charge filed against her brother as effectively as Mikey is dealing with the rape charge his sister leveled. Ellie has no idea who Mikey is. She's also supposedly the only witness to what happened that night, and has declared that she saw nothing.

They meet again later at a welcome-home party when Tom gets out on bail, and they start to bond (bail bond, get it?! Forget it!). Mikey's plan is to try and get some information on her brother, so he and his pal can plan on how to ding him effectively with that thar spanner. Ellie is intrigued that Mikey isn't behaving towards her like other 'blokes' she's known.

On the day Ellie goes back to school bad things happen, and she detests all the attention. She gets into a fight and leaves early, and she calls Mikey, and they go down to the river together and swim despite the freezing water and lack of swim suits. And they kiss.

Mikey breaks up with his girlfriend Sienna about whom he cared little. In fact he's never really cared for any girl he's known (other than his sisters and his mum) until he met Ellie.

Meanwhile Ellie blows off school one day and heads out to the coast (they live in a coastal town) with her brother. She's becoming something of a rebel against convention after that school fight, and so she shares his cigarette sprinkled with some cannabis resin, something she's never done before. Wanting to express her fears and doubts about the upcoming rape trial, Ellie says (what is to Tom) the wrong thing and he essentially kicks her out of the car to find her own way home. Perhaps we should learn something about his attitude towards women from this.

Ellie recalls that Mikey had told her he worked at a pub on the sea front and so she wanders around and eventually finds her way into the pub where he is, but before she meets him, she runs into his boss who informs her of his name - something she hasn't known until now. She suddenly realizes that he is the brother of the girl her own brother allegedly raped!

She wants to storm off, but eventually they end up sitting on a bench looking at the sea. Ellie arrives at a plan: she will trap Mikey in the same way she thinks her brother was trapped, so she agrees to go on a picnic with him. When he shows up at her house, she invites him in, informing him that she's home alone, and that she still has to make sandwiches. Mikey ends up making them, and he's all ready to leave, but Ellie insists upon showing him around her home, and they find themselves in her bedroom, where she takes her top off, in the pretense that she's changing clothes. But Mikey doesn't behave in the ungentlemanly way she half-expected he would.

Suddenly Ellie's brother Tom is home unexpectedly, and he and Mikey get into a big fight which causes bruises and draws blood. Ellie breaks it up with the garden hose and Mikey leaves, feeling wretched, and neither wanting nor expecting to see Ellie again. But of course they have to see each other in court for the pre-trial hearing. Tom pleads not guilty. Ellie feels like rubbish warmed over. Mikey can't stop glancing at her.

Mikey and his friend Jacko (where did Downham come up with these names, seriously? Are these guys circus clowns or pre-schoolers?!) are out driving and Jacko tries to pick up two hikers they see by the roadside. His aggressive approach makes Mikey feel really uncomfortable, what with everything else that's been going on. Jacko can't understand his attitude. By this time, he's feeling as alienated from his supposed support network as Ellie is from hers. They have only each other they can talk to about this, it seems.

Ellie now has decided that she thinks Tom isn't as innocent as he claims. She agonizes over what Karyn is going through and she tries to talk with her family about it all, but is effectively pushed away whenever she raises these topics. Her brother and father treat her and her mother like servants. Maybe there's another lesson there? Like father like son?

Tom's solicitor talks with Ellie and advises her that they will not now be calling her as a witness since she's obviously compromised. He suggests that she might be wise to find her own solicitor.

A word or two about the British situation between barristers and solicitorsmight be in order, although I'm about as far from an expert as you can get. The rough breakdown is that the solicitor offers legal counsel, but the barrister represents the client's interests in the courtroom, although there have been changes to this system, I understand, so that things are a lot more muddy than they used to be. Why this system arose in the first place is a mystery to me. Doubtlessly it has its roots back in ancient British history, so I'd recommend you pop over to wikipedia if you're interested in learning anything about it.

Feeling completely cast to the wind, Ellie runs over to Mikey's place and texts him to meet her. At first he's a bit resentful and he tries to push her away, but they end up talking and then they take a bus out to her grandmother's empty cottage on the coast and there, they enter into a very hesitant tryst. Yes, tryst is the only word for it. It reminds me of a chapter I wrote in Saurus. It's Ellie's very first time, and it's Mikey's first time where he actually had his heart in what he was doing.

Both of them run into trouble when they get home and perversely, it has nothing to do with their intimacy! The secret is out at Mikey's place. Jacko has blabbed it all. Karyn is very angry at Mikey's 'defection to the enemy'. Ellie's family (at least the male contingent) are incensed at her defection. Curiously, her mother is the only one who 'mans' up and supports her.

Ellie goes to the police the next day to change her statement The police come down hard on her whilst telling her that it's for her own good because the defense (or in this case, since it's England, the defence) will try to argue that Mikey has put pressure on her to change her story. Curiously no one talks about the fight that between Tom and Mikey; it's like it never happened!

Ellie's father snipes at her relentlessly as he helps Tom to move out (he has to stay with a friend because he can't have any contact with Ellie now she's changed her story). They're taking out pretty much everything that belongs to Tom, like he died or is permanently moving out of the home.

Ellie feels wretched. When Mikey shows up at her home, bravely and shamelessly, since her mum and dad are home, tossing little rocks at her window, her mother appears at the door and tries to turn him away, threatening him with her husband and the police, but Ellie comes down in her pjs and they talk, and eventually (after she changes clothes) they take a walk together, out into the fields near the house. And that's how it ends, with the two of them realizing that the future is going to be rough and bumpy, but neither one of them is willing to give up on the other, nor turn from the path they're taking with each other and the future they will build together.

This is pretty much the perfect story. Downham nails it completely. Seriously. Sometimes the ways in which these people act is frustrating and annoying but they're not acting out of character. Yes, we never learn what the outcome of the trial is, but I don't think that's relevant. In reality it would be, of course, but this isn't about Tom and Karyn, it's about Ellie and Mikey, and Downham gives it everything.

One thing in particular to love about this novel is that Downham actually never takes sides. She never depicts Tom as being thoroughly evil, or Karyn as being loose or righteous, or dishonest. She tells it like it is - a complete mess, through which it's hard to see clearly and really hard to get a handle on what actually happened. Of course, Ellie clears up that part towards the end, but I don't doubt that this is what it's like when this kind of appalling interaction happens for real.

There are many people who take the attitude that all men are all closet rapists (and others who believe that women who dress in a certain way deserve what they get) and that all rapes are power plays, but I don't think it's quite that simple and people who try to paint this kind of thing in such simple black and white strokes are doing a disservice to the men and women involved in these tragedies.

Let's be clear: it's is never right to assume you have a claim on something belonging to someone with whom you're intimately involved or with whom, for whatever reason, you wish to be so involved. What your partner may offer you is a privilege for which you should be appreciative and thankful, even after it's withdrawn. It's not a title deed which you can claim at any time regardless of your partner's wishes, even if you're married to your partner.

The other side of that coin is that partners need to talk out problems they perceive, and not let them fester and turn into disasters. That's what partnership means. And they need to try to accommodate each other's wishes as far as is reasonable rather than simply turn their backs on each other's need for intimacy and thereby provoke resentment and potential problems down the road.

That said, one party or the other at any time has the absolute right to say no, no further, this stops here, and to be respected for that choice no matter what has happened beforehand. I'm sure that in the bulk of cases of rape, it is a sick aggressor who does not respect boundaries and who can't take no for an answer, but I'm not sold on the aggressive claim that it's 100% about dominance and subjectivity; that it's always a power play and I think it harms women and men alike to insist upon framing it always in such a pitiless black and white perspective

I think anyone who assumes that is missing things which could prove important in resolving and addressing case like this. Imagine, for example, that you have a couple of college kids who meet, go to a party, get drunk, but not helplessly so, have sex, and then in the morning one of them decides that was not what they'd intended, and files charges? How do we resolve something like that?

Clearly they should neither of them have acted under the influence of alcohol, but such a case is not the same as a case where someone forces their self upon another at knife-point. It's not that black and white. In that case, the one with the knife is entirely in the wrong and the other did nothing wrong although they will undoubtedly blame themselves, but in the hypothetical case I outlined above, who is really at fault there? One? The other? Both? It's a lot tougher to resolve that, which is why the smart thing to do is never to get yourself into a situation like that!

Karyn and Tom both should have realized that what they were doing was entirely inappropriate, but given Karyn's age and her inebriation, Tom ought to have been a lot more mature. Here's a conundrum: Suppose nothing had happened but Karyn had woken up convinced that something had? How would this story have run from there?

But in the end, in this case, the story really isn't about Karyn and Tom. It's about Ellie and Mikey, and it was told so well, with such great language and in such an engaging way. For as sad and frustrating as parts of the story are, and for as confusing as the issues can be, this is a great story.

Here's something to make you think. Doubtlessly, this will sound sick to some, but there's a potential for a sequel here about Tom and Karyn, which would be even more controversial: how they go from this appalling rift and detestation of each other, to falling in love and getting married. Yes, it would be an extremely tough novel to write, even more so than You Against Me, and many people probably wouldn't appreciate it, but if anyone could bring off a novel like that, it's Downham. How about You and me Against the World for the title?!

Here's something I came across today, Tanya Gold taking Joanna Lumley to task for her supposed blaming of girls for getting themselves raped! No, that's not what Lumley is saying at all, as far as I can tell. Lumley is telling girls how to protect themselves. That's not the same as saying it's the girl's fault. Of course it's the rapist's fault. But what Gold is saying is the equivalent of telling the fireman who advises you to get a smoke alarm and a fire extinguisher that it's not necessary because it's 'the fire's fault' if your home burns down, not yours! lol! Seriously? If someone told you that you that, since it's the burglar's fault, you don't have to bother locking up your house or your car when you're away from it, would you think that advice smart? I wouldn't.

Yes it's the rapist who is entirely to blame for the rape, but there's a big difference between looking like a victim and actually becoming a victim. Taking intelligent precautions to keep yourself safe from burglary, robbery, fire and from attacks is not the same as taking blame for an attack if it happens, although all-too-many women do it pains me to say. All Lumley is saying, as is, I think, evident from the context, is that it's always smart to be proactive when it comes to protecting your person and your property. There are things you can to do to avoid even looking like a potential victim, let alone actually being one. So does Gold want girls to be victims just because she can then rightly blame the rapist? Can't we have both: people taking care to safeguard themselves and their family, and placing the blame squarely on the perp when those safeguards fail? It doesn't have to be either/or, Ms Gold.

Rape continues to be a news item, of course, both in the US miltiary of late and at shocking levels, and in Egypt. Evidently Islam is no respector of women, and religious military doesn't appear to offer women any security there either.