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In a chilling future, one 16-year-old girl is driven to the ultimate act of heroism. The Testament of Jessie Lamb, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is the breakout novel from award-winning author Jane Rogers. Its cunningly drawn characters and riveting vision of a dystopic future fraught with difficult moral choices will make The Testament of Jessie Lamb an instant favorite for fans of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man. "The novel does not set up an elaborate apocalypse, but astringently strips away the smears hiding the apocalypses we really face. Like Jessie's, it is a small, calm voice of reason in a nonsensical world." --The Independent… (more)
Very British, minimally post apocalyptic story about a sort of daft girl who thinks she can help save the world. I disliked the ending, due to my personal beliefs about pregnancy and children. I read this mostly from curiosity, since it got lots of good reviews. ( )
I'm a little surprised at the accolades that this book has received; I found it in the new book section of my public library, and thought it was misfiled YA apocalyptic fiction. I was interested to read at the beginning of the story that the disease which was attacking the population was a modification of Creutzfield-Jakob, which is part of the family of prion diseases that have fascinated me for a long time, but there was not much further discussion about it, since Jessie did not have much firsthand contact with anyone with the disease. Overall, I though the book was styled much more like a young adult novel than an adult science fiction novel. Perhaps the faulty genre is why I felt it rated lower than it might have otherwise. ( )
Not necessarily a great book, but I liked it quite a bit better than I expected to. Tonally, very reminiscent of Never Let Me Go (although I thought that was a better book). I don't expect to see it on the Booker shortlist, but I think it earned its place on the longlist. Recommended for fans of dystopian fiction. Especially if you liked The Handmaid's Tale. ( )
Not necessarily a great book, but I liked it quite a bit better than I expected to. Tonally, very reminiscent of Never Let Me Go (although I thought that was a better book). I don't expect to see it on the Booker shortlist, but I think it earned its place on the longlist. Recommended for fans of dystopian fiction. Especially if you liked The Handmaid's Tale. ( )
You can't ever unknow things one you've heard them. They become part of you, they work inside you like yeast in the dough Sal and I made one weekend. You leave it on a board with a tea-towel over it, and it starts rising and changing its shape. It swells until it's become something else altogether.
To do something straightforward, where there would be no tangled argument and no compromise. Something that would make a difference to the world. Something it was within my power to do without having to rely on anyone else.
In a chilling future, one 16-year-old girl is driven to the ultimate act of heroism. The Testament of Jessie Lamb, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is the breakout novel from award-winning author Jane Rogers. Its cunningly drawn characters and riveting vision of a dystopic future fraught with difficult moral choices will make The Testament of Jessie Lamb an instant favorite for fans of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man. "The novel does not set up an elaborate apocalypse, but astringently strips away the smears hiding the apocalypses we really face. Like Jessie's, it is a small, calm voice of reason in a nonsensical world." --The Independent
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(from the back of the book) Some blame the scientists, others see the hand of God, and still others claim that human arrogance and destructiveness are reaping the punishment they deserve. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl living in extraordinary times. As her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her toward the ultimate act of heroism. She wants her life to make a difference. But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her scientist father fears, impressionable, innocent, and incapable of understanding where her actions lead?
Set in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman's struggle to become independent of her parents. As the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart, Jessie begins to question her parents' attitudes, their behavior, and the very world they bequeathed her.
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Jane Rogers is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.
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The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
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