The Testament of Jessie Lamb

I would probably have categorized this book as young adult if it were not shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. I am not sure, though, that it deserved those accolades.

The book is set in near future England and is a counterpoint to The Children of Men by P.D. James. In this scenario, every woman who gets pregnant dies of a terrible bio-engineered disease. Jessie, the teenage protagonist, may be a witness to the end of the human race, as procreation basically comes to a halt. Jessie tells the story in a sort of diary; when the book opens, she is being held prisoner by an unknown person for an unknown reason who has asked her to write her "testament."

Society is unraveling, although not as drastically show more as in The Children of Men. For me, this was the most unbelievable aspect of the story. (Some spoilers ahead.) Gender relations seem to completely break down when the possibility of reproduction is removed. Young men eschew relationships to form gangs, turn homosexual, and spit on women. Huh? This development seems to completely discount the strong emotional bonds that can form between men and women by asserting that the only reason for the sexes to relate to one another is to produce offspring. I think this is trying to be a feminist novel--women move in together and form protest groups--but they come across as irrational and man-hating. I just didn't think this aspect of the book was believable or appropriately complex, which somewhat spoiled the rest of the story for me.

Jessie, as her name implies, come to think of herself as a sacrifice, which I also found problematic. However, this was more believable to me, in the context of the character. I agreed with pretty much every other character that her sacrifice was unnecessary and ill-conceived, but it seemed like something that a teen in the throes of severe angst would do. However, I'm not sure that this was the perspective the author wanted me to take. I think we are supposed to think of Jessie as heroic, maybe even Christ-like (again, the name). I won't even get into the fact that a rudimentary examination of the underlying science makes the whole scheme untenable.

I'm not totally panning this book. The writing is decent, Jessie's character is well developed, and the conceit is intriguing. However, I do think we've seen this kind of thing done before, and done much better. I just get the sense that the author wrote this without truly thinking it through, or without building in the layers of complexity necessary to keep the overarching theme from seeming muddled and without real impact. show less

Almost of necessity, dystopian literature has its roots in concerns of the times in which it is written. It is an author envisioning a potential future in which something already existing or on the horizon heads in a bad direction. What author Jane Rogers recognizes in her award-winning The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the synergistic effect of the primary cause or event.

The book is built on a commonly imagined catastrophe – a virus. This isn’t a virus that spreads an Ebola-like plague or kills those who are infected. It is far more shattering for the future of mankind. Although this virus, an act of unknown bioterrorists, has infected everyone on the planet, it is activated only by pregnancy. Pregnancy triggers Creutzfeldt-Jakob show more disease, a variant of which is commonly called “mad cow disease.” Before the child comes to term, the disease destroys the mother’s brain and she will not survive, giving the condition the name Maternal Death Syndrome.

Not only does the virus kill every woman who becomes pregnant, the mother passes it along to the child. Because of that, women face the choice of childlessness or having one child and certain death. The effect on the human psyche and the future viability of the human race is devastating. This is the near-future England in which Jessie Lamb, a teenage girl, and her friends are coming of age. Yet Rogers ups the ante with a twist.

Science has not found a cure, only a vaccine, which does little good when everyone alive is already infected. Yet scientists – who include Jessie’s father – realize that vaccinating embryos frozen before MDS appeared will be immune from the virus, providing a way to better perpetuate the human race. One concept is "Sleeping Beauties," young women who are implanted with vaccinated embryos and, after becoming pregnant, are placed in a coma and on life support until the fetus is brought to term. Upon birth, the mother’s life support is unplugged and the child goes to adoptive parents.

Not surprisingly, this creates a national uproar. So scientists also experiment on creating artificial wombs, as well as transgenic wombs in sheep or potentially other animals that can bring a human fetus to term. These proposed “solutions” result in religious and political battle lines being drawn among a wide variety of interest groups. There are activist groups who contend there would be more focus on a cure if were men were dying instead of women. There are animal rights groups confronting scientists and those who believe animal experimentation is preferable to human experimentation or the Sleeping Beauties program. There are the legal and social issues of who has rights in a frozen embryo and who are the parents.

Jessie is just one of many teens and children buffeted by these events. Some, both young and old, have given up hope entirely, leading to societal decay. There is growing divisiveness between young and old, with the young blaming their parents or others for the condition of the world and abandoning family life to strike out on their own. Others become members of any number of militant factions. Others do battle over religious doctrine, both traditional and evolving.

The testament Jessie writes reveals her varying and uncertain views of and attitudes toward these events. In addition to the traditional issues in any family – domestic discord, the illness of close relatives and the like – she must confront both feelings of hopelessness and a desire to help solve the problems in some fashion. She considers activism, both aggressive and passive. She struggles with being a prime candidate to be a Sleeping Beauty. She finds herself caught among the various and often opposing opinions and priorities of her friends and peers.

Yet the central conflict is a universal one. Jessie is often impassioned by altruism and the need to make a difference. "The only solution is a new beginning," she says at one point. "And the only relief is in doing something to make that happen." Her parents tend toward the pragmatism that comes with age. Her desire to help effectuate change clashes sharply with their willingness to allow science to work toward a cure.

The mix of issues, conflicts and ramifications of MDS helped earn The Testament of Jessie Lamb the Arthur C Clarke Award in May. The book also was long-listed for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. At the same time, the mix also seems to introduce a couple characters who seem to appear and reappear just for the purpose of raising an issue or conflict. And at times Jessie seems a bit too mercurial, although that may well be an effort to reflect the struggle of a teenage mind to cope with the threat and ramifications of MDS.

Jessie Lamb isn't in the vanguard of some movement. And whether she is a heroic role model may depend on the reader's own predilections. Yet Rogers allows the reader to reach their conclusion but unfolding the struggles of a young woman in finding her place and her own way in a confusing world beset by turmoil.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.) show less

In this near future novel, the world is suffering from the sins of its previous generations. Additionally, a new disease (MDS or "Maternal Death Syndrome") which affects the brain, has infected everyone, though it is only activated in women when they become pregnant. It's fatal for the women and the unborn babies.

When we begin this novel, 16 year old Jessie Lamb is being held captive, her ankles bound, by someone we will soon learn is her father. The captivity is to prevent Jessie from doing something.

Before the reader can digest the horror of that situation, Rogers begins the backstory. Jessie and a somewhat loose knit group of friends are upset with what is going on in the world around them. There is more than a little animosity show more towards parents and their generation, whom the teens hold responsible for almost everything. The kids are looking to do something—make a difference in the world—and they begin to explore various groups organized around different causes, all with acronyms for names (I mention this because I had a tough time keeping the groups straight). Jessie is interested, though still somewhat directionless. She very much wants to do something, she just doesn't have a focus yet.

Jessica's father is a scientist working in the field that is trying to find a cure for MDS. As he explains to her (over the course of the novel), there are many avenues being explored, some controversial. She loves her parents, despite the fact that she blames them, generally-speaking, for all the ills of the world (so not so unlike most generations of teens, eh?). As the story progresses, Jessie's yearning grows into a desire and she, without telling her parents, volunteers to be a "Sleeping Beauty". She will be implanted with a pre-MDS embryo (frozen from past IVF treatments, and which can now can be vaccinated against MDS), put in a coma while the fetus develops to term, and after the birth, she will be cut off from life support & die—a noble sacrifice to the continuation of the human race (it is no accident that Rogers has given her the name "lamb"). Needless to say, her parents are not happy about it, nor are most of her friends.

Rogers does an excellent job creating the adolescent mindset, and I recognized in Jessie that search for identity and meaning, and the idealistic way of thinking, that so pervades adolescence. But I also understood the viewpoint of her parents, even the desperation of her father. The issue and the responses to it are complicated, as is Jessie's intended sacrifice—which makes for a very thought-provoking read. Are 16 year olds old enough to sacrifice their lives for a cause? Should they be expected to do so? Would such experiments be ethical? When does activism become domestic terrorism? (this last question pertains to some of her friends).

This book would offer some great discussion in most any groups, particularly high schools, if one can get the 'sex' past the parental censors (the issue has a connection to sex, of course, and there is one 'first sex' scene between Jessie and a boy). show less

A biologically engineered virus has infected the women of the world that brings death to any who become pregnant. The future of humanity is at stake. Will there even be a future? That is what the people of the world have to wrestle with in The Testament of Jessie Lamb.

Yet as the title implies, this is a personal story, the account of one 16-year-old. The book is speculative fiction the way I like, about the people who must react to their extraordinary circumstances, rather than filled with techno-babble as to the specifics that brought them there.

Jessie is like many 16-year-olds I've known, her idealism untouched by cynicism, motivated by a drive to have an impact on the world, with a hope that just by dint of goodwill and determination show more she will be able to transform all. Hers is a great portrayal of adolescent psychology. The really complex characters in the book, however, are her parents, who clearly love their daughter but resort to some frankly horrifying tactics to deter Jessie from following through on a major decision she makes to incarnate her ideals.

Naturally, since the story is told from Jessie's point-of-view, all sympathy is with her. She is very persuasive in making the case for her decision. But given the major consequences her decision will have, I have to question exactly how I myself would react if she were my 16-year-old daughter. show less

I turned the last page of The Testament of Jessie Lamb a few days ago, but the book stayed with for quite awhile as I mulled it over. Jane Roger's novel is definitely thought provoking.

It is set in England sometime in the not too distant future and told from the perspective of sixteen year old Jessie. A virus - Maternal Death Syndrome, known as MDS has been unleashed. What does it do? It kills every woman who becomes pregnant, and the child is born infected as well. The virus will eventually kill off the human race. No one know who is responsible.

Jessie is just coming into adulthood, making choices about school, boys and her own beliefs. She joins many activist groups and supports other current causes - fuel consumption, eco-causes, show more animal rights, children's rights, feminist rights and ultimately the right to choose. But not choose as we know it. Instead, the choice is to become pregnant with a embryo frozen before the virus was unleashed. It is thought that these children will be born healthy. The scientists involved have decreed that young women will be the best incubators. They become known as Sleeping Beauties. And Jessie decides that this is the ultimate act for her. Her part - her dying - will help save the human race.

And this is where all the mulling came into play. Does Jessie have the right to choose death? How much of that choice is made for her with propaganda, peer pressure, societal pressure? Is she making the choice for purely selfish reasons? To show her parents she is grown up? Is she able to make such life altering decisions at what we consider to be a young age? What about a society that has accepted these Sleeping Beauties as part of their culture? And accepts these deaths as necessary. How much change can one individual make with their choices? I could go on and on - you can see why the book stayed with me. The Testament of Jessie Lamb would stimulate lots of discussion for book clubs.

.The first half of the book - Jessie's life and coming of age - rang true. The dialogue seemed to belong to a sixteen year old, as did the situations and attitudes. It was in the second half of the book that I felt Rogers lost me a bit. I just didn't buy into Jessie's reasoning for choosing to die. (But this is where all my questioning started!)

Those looking for dystopian fiction a la Hunger Games won't find it here. Rather, you'll find a book that make you think.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb was long listed for the Man Booker Prize. And is the 26th winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the most prestigious award for science fiction in Britain. show less

Set a month or two in the future, Jane Rogers pulls the reader quickly into a world that has been devastated by a virus (called MDS) manufactured to cause maternal death within days of conception. The human race faces swift extinction. As scientists scramble for a cure, England’s population, particularly the young, polarize into factions. Each blames a different aspect of modern society for the scourge. An animal rights’ group insists that the virus could never have been manufactured without illicit and immoral testing on animals. FLAME, a women’s rights association, cite MDS as the last link in the chain of patriarchal oppression. Others claim that only politics will find a solution to the approaching end of humanity. Teenaged show more Jessie Lamb is an only child. Her parents’ marriage has hit a rough patch. Her friends have all been absorbed into various activist organizations. Jessie is dying, literally, to make a difference in the fractured world adults have left to her generation. Reports from China say that thousands of young women are being drafted to be impregnated, then kept alive on machines until their babies are born. The mothers are then allowed to die. Dad, who works in a lab, reveals that England has a “Sleeping Beauty” program to her. Teenaged volunteers are carefully screened, physically and psychologically before being admitted to the trials. This is the meaningful act Jessie has been waiting for: to be able to keep the human race alive! Mum and Dad are horrified that their daughter would even consider this course of action and when all their cajoling and arguments fail to dissuade Jessie, Dad kidnaps her and locks her in a room at her grandmother’s house. This is where Jessie writes her “testament”. Lots of debating between father and daughter result only in a stalemate. Jessie is utterly convinced that to give her life for this cause is not only justifiable but commendable. It makes her life worth something.
As I read this short book (not much longer or more structure than a novella or long short story), I figured it was one of those YA coming-of-age novels that really is only for young adults. Full of that roiling mixture of teen hyperbole and lack of a meaningful life. The ending was a disappointment to me; I felt I had been “taught” something. As someone wrote, good science fiction takes place in the future as a commentary on the present. Ms Rogers seemed to be on a rant about how close to the brink of annihilation we humans have brought ourselves and our world.

While researching the book and author, I discovered that it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: huh? I found an interview with Ms Rogers where she talked about the “science” behind the idea of MDS and also about how we have abused our world. This pretty much confirmed my suspicions. But then as an aside, Ms Rogers said she admired John Wyndham’s novels, particularly The Chrysalids. It took awhile for that to percolate in my brain until the aha moment came: I can’t really explain it without giving away too much of the story. Suffice it to say that the story works on more than a literal level. I don’t know how I missed the biblical allusion of the protagonist’s name: think Jesse and lamb; the double meaning of “testament”; the Disneyism “Sleeping Beauty”….

Ms Rogers is, I think, using a science fiction context to give the reader an objective view of how we, particularly youth, approach the future. This opens the way for multiple viewpoints: is Jessie another Joan of Arc or a depressed, suicidal teenager? Are her parents typical adults whose own messed-up lives make them cling to their offspring or are they battle-scarred veterans hoping to save their daughter from an impulsive decision? Although a quick read, The Testament of Jessie Lamb will keep the reader pondering long after the last page.

8 out of 10 for crystallizing complex issues into one young woman’s choice. show less

This is one of the Booker longlist’s token genre selections, for science fiction, alongside The Sisters Brothers for a Western and Derby Day for historical fiction (which is the most tolerable of genre works, as far as the committee is concerned). Being a Booker longlistee, of course, means that it’s literary science fiction - the kind of thing Margaret Atwood would write and then deny writing.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is set in a modern-day England that has suddenly been ravaged, along with the rest of the world, by a genetically engineered disease called Maternal Death Syndrome. Mothers can no longer bear children; the pregnancy kills them and their unborn children. No new babies are being born, despair and suicide wrack the show more world, scientists are scrambling to find a cure, and religious fundamentalists are duking it out with activist groups in the streets. The protagonist is the titular Jessie Lamb, a high school student whose father works in a research lab. It reminded me partly of Oryx & Crake, partly of Never Let Me Go and partly of Children of Men.

The novel is relayed as a frame story, with Jessie being held captive by someone and writing down her “testament.” It soon becomes clear that her captor is her father, trying to prevent her from carrying out a decision she has made; one which she thinks is noble and heroic, and one which her father thinks is stupid and wasteful. At first I thought the book was fairly predictable, guessing what her decision was around page 50, but I realised before long that the book’s mystery was entirely different: whether Jessie is right, or whether her father is right. Much like the fate of the children at Hailsham in Never Let Me Go, Jessie’s dilemma is revealed relatively early in the book, and the story works towards a deeper purpose.

Essentially it is this: scientists have discovered a cure for MDS, but can only vaccinate embryos that already exist in frozen storage. Women must volunteer to be implanted, sacrificing their lives in order to produce MDS-free babies and preserve the human race; and because MDS attacks the immune system, younger, teenage volunteers are preferred. (This is obviously plot-servicing science, but the book is good enough that Rogers can be forgiven.) The first point this raises is whether it’s moral for 16-year old girls to sign their lives away; whether they can be considered mature enough to make that decision. Several characters give different takes on this; personally, with the survival of the human race at stake, I would sanction pretty much anything. The second (and more important) point is whether Jessie decides to do this because she genuinely believes it to be a noble sacrifice, or whether she has ulterior, troubled-teen, suicidal motives.

Or maybe I’m the only one who thought that? This is one of the greatest aspects of the book; it's deceptively simple and shallow, but Rogers uses Jessie’s first-person point of view to great effect, and we often gather that there’s a lot more going on than she is interested in or thinks about – early on, for example, before she decides she wants to sacrifice herself, she mentions hearing on the news that the Chinese embryo program is recruiting thousands of teenage “volunteers,” and it doesn’t occur to Jessie to question whether they really would be volunteers in a country like China. Indeed, we hear very little of how MDS is affecting the rest of the world, because Jessie tends to be consumed with her own thoughts and problems. She is realistically written as both a rational, intelligent young woman, and yet also a girl; a girl who is swayed by small things, who latches onto ideas, and who may very well be deluding herself. Several times she makes what I took to be Freudian slips, talking about how it will soon “all be over,” and how she has to “end it.” My personal impression was that Jessie is actually suicidal, and uses the embryo program as a mask, a way to tell herself that she’s killing herself for something good and noble.

Am I right? I don’t know. It’s either a very subtle book, or I read into something that wasn’t there. I can easily see readers having very different interpretations of it. I found the ending to be bleak and depressing, given my verdict, but others might find it hopeful and uplifting. I’m very interested to hear what Jane Rogers’ vision was.

Regardless, there’s no doubt that it’s a well-written and well-constructed novel. Written from Jessie’s point of view, it’s quite readable and engaging (in fact, it could fit into the YA genre just as easily as the science fiction genre) and I was often compelled to sit down and read it, or keep reading another chapter even though I was ready for sleep. The Testament of Jessie Lamb is a solid literary science fiction novel, raising difficult moral questions and examining complex motives and character struggles in the face of a horrifying future. It’s well worth reading, and a worthy inclusion on the Booker longlist.

BOOKER VERDICT

On the Guardian Books blog I called the inclusion of this novel “lip service,” which to some degree I still stand by. It’s not that I think the committee worries about offending science fiction writers and wants them to feel included, but I do think the longlist allows them to play with a diverse selection, and draw attention to books which they consider to be worthy of greater acknowledgement but which they have no intention of ever actually awarding the prize to. After all, merely being longlisted for the Booker prize is a much greater honour than many other prizes.

Having now read the novel, I rate its chances more highly, but still low. There is no doubt that it’s a good book – better, in my opinion, than The Stranger’s Child – but it’s also shallow upon first glance, partly science fiction, and has a young adult protagonist. All these things usually cost marks in the eyes of the judging panel. It may very well take a place on the shortlist, but certainly won’t win – just like Oryx & Crake and Never Let Me Go before it. show less