Before I Die by Jenny Downham

I came across this paperback in the Oxfam shop; the young girl serving me enthused, ‘this is a really good book’. I didn’t realise how good, even for someone middle-aged like me. For teenagers confronting it it must be very powerful, almost shocking.
Tessa is 16 and dying of leukaemia; her journey is narrated in the first person as she draws close to her estranged parents, younger brother, best friend, Zoey and the unlikely love of her life, Adam, the boy next door. The author said it took two and a half years to write, often writing 40,000 words and keeping 2,000. She says, ‘I had to get rid of all the cliches by writing through them’. I cried reading Tessa’s matter of fact letter, Instructions for Dad, detailing her funeral wishes. Although unbearably sad, the novel is a celebration of life, expressing the contentment of falling in love, however fleeting that may be. It reminded me of the poignant poem Raymond Carver wrote when he was dying of cancer: And did you get what you wanted?
It seems that, at whatever age it happens, our dying wishes are to spend the time that’s left with those we love most.
Tessa’s choice of poem for her funeral is equally poignant:
Don’t under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It’s been done to death (ha, ha) and it’s too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare.

So here it is.

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;
Then of thy beauty do I question make
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Before I Die is an intensely moving, accomplished first novel for all ages.