Before I Die

Downham, Jenny. Before I Die. Oxford: David Fickling Books, 2007.

Tessa Scott’s body is failing her. Diagnosed with leukemia at 12, she has fought unsuccessfully for six years to beat the disease and now the cancer is no longer responding to treatments. Before the cancer can completely ravage her already ruined body, Tessa decides that she is going to make a list of the things that she would like to do before she dies. Items like trying drugs, having sex, committing crimes and saying yes to everyone for a single day top the list that continues to grow throughout the novel. Tessa’s friend Zoey and neighbor Adam (who Tessa meets the afternoon after checking off her first item), help Tessa check off different things. Soon Tessa and Adam become mutually attracted to each other and begin a relationship. Tessa’s father, a single parent, tries to protect Tessa as much as he can, but Tessa refuses to sit still and just die. She continues to go through her list, occasionally stopped along the way by her ever-worsening disease. Eventually, after a valiant fight and lasting longer than even doctors expected, the cancer begins to take over Tessa’s body and renders her languid and lethargic. Captured in quick prose, the last chapter of the novel relates the last memories and thoughts of the teen as she leaves the world, surrounded by her friends and family.

Death is a topic not for the light of heart, but Jenny Downham does the best to create a portrayal of a teen facing the end of her life prematurely in a realistic and readable way. Tessa is given a wide range of emotions, from anger, confusion and lust to happiness, tenacity and discernment. As the reader sees Tessa through her last months, each facet of her life is shown, but the cause of her journey, the reason for her writing the list is never far from the forefront of the story. The effect of her sickness on the people in her life is also treated with a great deal of attention, giving depth and quality to the secondary characters in the novel. Occasionally, however, the characters are presented with emotions for which no motivation is given. Furthermore, Tessa’s mother is reintroduced into the picture, characterized as someone who left her family, but flits in and out of the story without much regard.

Downham has a tremendous gift in creating elegant prose that describes the scene. The Kirkus Review of the work remarks on this “lurid language [that] makes a painful journey bearable, beautiful and transcendent.” This talent is especially evident toward the end of the work; Tessa is nearing the end of her voyage and she observes she “can’t hold onto anything. Like a tree losing its leaves. I forget even the thing I was thinking.” At times though, the imagery can be too heavy handed and may lose a reader. Asides expounding on the feel of the dirt, the smell in the air and the colors of the leaves feels overly focused and often forced. Not so forced, however, is the theme of the book, which is difficult to do with such subject matter. Tessa soon realizes that is not about the things that she has done, but rather the manner in which she completed them and who stands beside her as she accomplishes these things.

Book jacket found on: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/jenny-downham/before-i-die.htm

Speak

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. New York City: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999.

Melinda Sordino is dreading her first day of high school after a summer when an event occurred that forever changed her perspective. This trauma has caused Melinda into turn into herself and rendered her nearly speechless. Her former friends are falling into new groups, leaving her behind and Melinda is infamous around her school for calling the cops during a raucous house party. She struggles not only socially but also at home; with a distracted father and overworked mother, Melinda rarely gets the support she needs. During the first week of school, Melinda cautiously makes a friend in overachiever Heather, a new transfer, whom Melinda does not really like. Unable to cope with joining her classmate in mundane activities, Melinda finds a sanctuary in a forgotten janitorial closet and makes it into a space she can sit and think. As school continues, Melinda’s grades continue to plummet (although she seems to excel in and take interest in art) and it is finally revealed that the source of Melinda’s behavior change is that she was sexually assaulted by Andy, a popular senior at the party she imploded. Disclosing this information to her ex-best friend (who is the first person she reveals this to), who is now seeing Andy, Melinda is met with disbelief and she becomes further defeated. As she is cleaning out her closet toward the end of school, Andy, her attacker, confronts her about the things she is saying, intending to force himself upon her again. Luckily, Melinda is able to shove open the door of the closet, where she finds members of a girls’ sports team have arrived to defend her.

Speak takes the form of diary-like entries following Melinda through the four marking periods in her first year of high school. Anderson does a fantastic job giving Melinda a strong point of view, creating an often witty and sometimes sorrowful outlook on the world she is forced to participate in. Reviewers in both School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly note that Anderson writing style make the “pain” that Melinda is going through “palpable.” Teen readers will find the writing style easy to follow and the plot realistic through the character development that Melinda and other characters are given throughout the story. The reader is easily transported to the surroundings that Melinda is in everyday, with vivid, yet not overwrought, descriptions of classrooms, bedrooms and the outdoors. These descriptions lend themselves nicely to involve the reader further in the story, yet do not detract from the story itself.

What is most intriguing about the novel is the fact that not everything that Melinda is going through is revealed all at once; her story is peeled back like an onion, layer after layer, in a methodical way. Melinda is giving bits and pieces to the reader, slowly, as if she is attempting to forget the situation herself. Melinda is dealing with a weighty situation, one that she has not even come to terms with yet. She runs into her attacker saying, “IT found me again,” a sentence that is indicative of her state in confronting the issue. This writing strategy gives the work a realism that would be overlooked were all of the circumstances of her situation been given upfront. Taking on such a weighty topic could certainly cause a writer to too heavily focus on a sermon about rape and the perils of high school, but Anderson keeps a light hand in this regard. The end of the story, where Melinda is faced with her attacked yet again, feels a bit trite, but the transformation that she makes throughout the story gives a feeling tangibility.

Book cover found on :http://picsdigger.com/keyword/speak%20novel/