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 Ten Things 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.

An intensely moving and uncompromisingly honest story told in the words of a 16-year-old girl who is dying of leukaemia. Now a major film - Now is Good - starring Dakota Fanning.

About the Author

Jenny Downham was an actress for many years before concentrating on her writing full-time. She lives in London with her two sons.

Her debut novel Before I Die was critically acclaimed and was shortlisted for the 2007 Guardian Award and the 2008 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year, nominated for the 2008 Carnegie Medal and the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize, and won the 2008 Branford Boase Award.

Reviews
Dealing frankly with teenage life, Before I Die will be the year's most talked-about novel. * The Sunday Times *

A novel that won't fail to touch those who read it...A book that will make you happy to be alive
*****

* Heat *
Fierce, bold and bright...Jenny Downham is capable of exquisite, almost fevered writing, but she's also a master of pace, slowly establishing a heroine so brimful of life that it is wrenching to endure the attritions of the final pages * Observer *
Downham has not only eschewed mawkishness, but has managed to convey real feeling. Her heroine - angry, funny and occasionally irrational - positively leaps off the page...This is a thoughtful, and sometimes painful, exploration of what it feels like to say goodbye to life before you have had a chance to live it. * The Times *


Awards
Short-listed for Branford Boase Award 2008.



Book Information
ISBN 9780552774628
Author Jenny Downham
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Black Swan
Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
Weight(grams) 244g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 21mm