![]() ![]() ![]() It is in the quality of that freedom that Downham proves her abundant gifts as a writer, by showing us, in a stark interior poetry that never turns its back on the external world, what it is to face death honestly, as Tessa thinks, “before I’ve even lived properly.” But then, she would have to be someone remarkable, wouldn’t she, to make us want to be inside her head with her, horribly alone, yet also strikingly free. As in every perception, every particle of one girl’s desire, regret, rage, lust, light, darkness, right to the end.Īnd what a girl Tessa is, trapped in her failing body, in an unnamed English town. This may sound too depressing for words, but it is only one indication of the inspired originality of “Before I Die,” by Jenny Downham, that the reader can finish its last pages feeling thrillingly alive.īefore I die: as in right up to the moment when. ![]() Yes, a book, a first novel no less, about a 16-year-old girl dying of leukemia. If it sometimes seems as though the world is killing itself - the papers are full of spectacular evidence - here, between covers, is something to live for. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |