Description of book
Tessa has just a few months to live.
Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It's her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is sex.
Released from the constraints of 'normal' life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up.
Tessa's feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallized in the precious weeks before Tessa's time finally runs out.
BEFORE I DIE is a brilliantly-crafted novel, heartbreaking yet astonishingly life-affirming. It will take you to the very edge.
Reviews
'BEFORE I DIE works through Tessa's pitch-perfect voice and resists every false emotion and easy escape. She lives with integrity and ruthless honesty. Moreover, the writing is nuanced, subtle and controlled with a finale as heartbreaking as it is inevitable. BEFORE I DIE is one of the year's standout books. Expect tears.' Mike Shuttleworth, SUNDAY AGE
'Tessa may be my favourite literary heroine.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Downham's book, for the most part, is incredible cheerful, a celebration of Tessa as alive, vibrant and, above all, young . . . Downham takes the reader to the sticking place, the place which we never, ever want to let ourselves see, but she does not leave us alone there.' COURIER-MAIL
'One might have expected such a book to be heart-wrenchingly moving - as indeed it is - but one could not have guessed that it would also be so inspiring, so life-affirming, would clothe unsentimental honesty in such poetry and grace: would be, in short, such a transcendent, remarkable work'. MAGPIES