Before I Die- Speech

If it sometimes seems as though the world is killing itself, here, between covers, is something to live for. A book about a 16-year-old girl dying of leukaemia. This may sound too depressing for words, but this much-hyped novel is meant to drive hundreds of thousands of readers to tears and to fast injunctions for all their friends to read it. | |
|Good Morning Class and Mr Cartwright. Before I Die by Jenny Downham is in every perception, every |
|particle of one girl’s desire, regret, rage, lust, light and darkness right to the end. Here is a |
|girl who wants, and because her time is limited, her wanting has a greater intensity than your |
|average teenager will ever know. A girl named Tessa, trapped in her failing body in an unnamed |
|English |
|town writes a list of 10 things that she desires to do before her time is up. 10 experiences that |
|are not necessarily the kind of thing a parent would love. In fact, Tessa's pretty sure that her dad|
|will hate most of it. But it's her life. And she wants to get to experience it. Tessa tastes new |
|experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. This is where Jenny |
|Downham |
|has managed to take the reader into the mind of sixteen-year-old middle school girl, her family and |
|her friends as Tessa puts up an amazing struggle and we see the strain that such an illness brings |
|to all around her. Jenny expresses to readers throughout the novel to never turn your back on the |
|external world, and honestly what it is like to face death, as Tessa thinks, “before I’ve even lived|
|properly.” |

|Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, her |
|relationships are strained at best. Her father is at wit's end. Zoey, her best friend, comes and |
|goes. She meets the boy neighbour, after a long stretch of watching him through her bedroom window. |
|Although through all that Tessa finds love. In the early stages only to get close, push him away, |
|get close |
|then push him away again she finally falls in love with Adam and for her receiving his love in |
|return is the experience she most hungers for. One of the more surprising revelations to be found in|
|“Before I Die” is that it’s a young adult novel only in the sense that readers Tessa’s age are |
|perhaps the ideal audience for a true story about sex, drugs, love and death. Although reviewers |
|have stated “I |
|don’t care how old you are. This book will not leave you”. Personally, not the easiest story to |
|read, in terms of sunshine and happiness. It will take you to the very edge, but it's certainly well|
|worth the read. Tessa is someone to aspire to, when all is said and done. |
|By Jenna Hitch |
| |