The Testament of Jessie Lamb

by Jane Rogers

Millions of pregnant women in the not-too-distant future are dying from a rogue virus released in an act of biological terrorism. Nothing less than the survival of the human race is at stake.

Jessie Lamb is just an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl living in extraordinary times, who begins to question her parents' attitudes and behavior in her struggle to become independent. As the world collapses and the certainties of childhood are ripped away, her idealism and courage drive her toward the ultimate act of heroism. But is she being heroic, or innocent and impressionable as her father fears, incapable of understanding where her actions will lead?

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Young Adult, Speculative Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Ebooks

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Jane Rogers is an award winning author of nine novels, including The Testament of Jessie Lamb, Man-Booker longlisted and winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award 2012.

Other works include Mr Wroe's Virgins (which she dramatised for the BAFTA-nominated BBC drama series), Her Living Image (Somerset Maugham Award) and Promised Lands (Writers Guild Best Fiction Award). Her story collection Hitting Trees with Sticks was shortlisted for the 2013 Edgehill Award, and the title story was a BBC National Short story award winner.

Jane is Emerita Professor of Writing and also writes radio dramas and adaptations. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and lives in Banbury, UK.

www.janerogers.info

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dystopian tale of ultimate misogyny gone wrong.

It is the appalling end-tale to all those Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese people and others who abort female fetuses or commit infanticide on their girl babies. The disgustingly low place we occupy in the minds of those men who run society and invent religions and the women who lacking power, status and the economic means to challenge these vile and murderous authorities and must therefore, in order to survive themselves, back the status quo.

If female fetuses are such a disappointment, such a blow and a burden to the family that they should be destroyed, why not take it one step further and just destroy women altogether? So there we have it, an engineered virus that gives pregnant women something like Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease so they all die painfully with holes in their brain.

Unfortunatly this virus works too well. It not only destroys the women, but the babies die in the womb. What is to become of the human race?

While scientists work on a solution to this problem, they propose an interim workaround with great PR. Girls, young women (no 30+ please, it is explicitly stated that these women are past it) would be artificially-inseminated and put into a terminal coma and later be delivered by Caesarian section of their live babies.

Who would choose to be such a suicidal incubator? None. Who would choose to be a Sleeping Beauty, to help continue the human race? Such a thing does appeal to the sensibilities of the ever-romantic, idealistic teenage girl, yes?

So the story revolves around Jessie Lamb - Jesus Lamb of God - who volunteers despite her family and boyfriend, to do this, to have a Virgin birth and be the Saviour of all the peoples on Earth. Please....

All the usual dystopian suspects (yawn) also get a mention - marauding gangs, authoritarian males, rapists, the religious nutters of the 'this is all punishment' variety and the bolthole-in-the-countryside where we can grown our own food types.

To sum up, it was an interesting idea that might have lifted yet another dystopian novel into something less hackneyed than most of them, but only 'might have'. It needed either a philosopical explanation as to why the status quo would remain or else a solution to the situation.

Without either of those, it was just another dystopian novel with nothing to distinguish it.

[Minty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the premise of the book and felt the author raised some very intriguing issues, none of which was covered in any depth.

The first half of the book was quite gripping as the author set up a vivid world which could have gone in any number of challenging and meaningful directions. None of these progressed anywhere as the first person structure of the book led Jessie to turn her attentions back on herself. I wonder if the clever title of the book has in fact limited the author. The intelligent premise here could have resulted in a much longer and more gripping story. I felt that many issues were glossed over or quickly dropped, and was left with the impression that this dystopia was far too 'neat' and almost trite.

I was more interested in the history of the virus and the greater social and political reactions to the situation, and not convinced of Jessie's plight. At the halfway point I felt fed up with the book, which pretty much coincided with Jessie becoming more strong in her resolve. Her character had a sudden about face and was suddenly taken to repetitious preaching and self-righteousness. She basically had a personality transplant.

It felt like a chore to finish the book.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I saw the Booker Longlist for 2011, I was most excited about this book. It took a while to track it down since not many libraries in the states had purchased it yet!

I love a good dystopian novel, but I think this one is a little less than good. The premise is interesting - every human has been infected with MDS, a disease which lies dormant in the body until a woman becomes pregnant, and she dies soon after. Humanity is having to face the idea of becoming extinct, and it doesn't take long for one solution to present itself - 15-16 year olds who sacrifice their lives to become Sleeping Beauties, basically zombie-incubators for embryos that are still experimental within the time of the narration. (Zombies because the women still end up dying from the disease, not *actual* zombies).

The entire novel is somewhat of a journal written by Jessie Lamb, interspersed with accounts of her being held hostage in a room.

The story is compelling. The Handmaid's Tale meets Never Let Me Go meets, I don't know, Uglies? It does have an underlying YA feel to it, because of the emphasis on the teenage characters and their continuing interpersonal dramas, while the adults fade into the background. The way the parents are characterized is confusing, as the mother in particular seems unresponsive and untraumatized by events.

My biggest issue with the novel is how preachy it is. In the beginning you find 15 year olds waxing eloquently about how the earth will thrive after humans have died off, and mourning the devastation and pollution, which of course is unrealistic, and of course is just used for the author to make us understand how Truly Terrible this disease is. Just not necessary! A little more subtlety would have been greatly appreciated.

It happens again when the Sleeping Beauties come up, the comparison that the author draws between these young women entering into this arrangement knowing they will die and (mostly) men who do the same in entering a war. It is her argument, I'm not going to weigh in on it, but was another moment where I was taken completely out of the story because of how heavy-handed it was.

[Claudia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't remember ever having been as mad at a book and a character as this one.

In the none-too-distant future, an engineered virus that has infected everyone kills all women during their pregnancy. While scientists are working hard on a cure, a medical program takes saving the future of humankind in another direction: implanting embryos who've been frozen since the days before the virus into healthy 16-year-old volunteers ("Sleeping Beauties"), condemning them to death but resulting in healthy, uninfected babies. Jessie Lamb is one of those volunteers, and in Jane Rogers' novel, she tells her story.

Honestly, Jessie is a horrible character. Yes, sixteen-year-olds are generally not known to be the most rational, emotionally stable and empathic people, but from the first page, she displays a sense of superiority and judgmentalness ('this happens because my parents' generation are awful people, and my generation is so much better') I found hard to bear. At times, she seems perfectly aware of the selfishness of her decision – the pain she's causing her parents, her boyfriend, her friends – but all the while she's insisting on her right to make her own choices, she makes it clear that the choices and feelings of her parents and friends are inconsequential.

Even outside of my dislike for the protagonist, I couldn't at all bring myself to understand what the buzz was all about. This is not your run-of-the-mill apocalypse where humankind faces extinction through a sudden death – it would be a slow, almost natural process. Even if there's not going to be a cure, people get old and die and no new generation will follow. It doesn't really affect the lives of anyone alive at the moment – not for decades to come, anyway. Why would the world go in a turmoil about it? And: is it really something that needs to be stopped, at all costs?

Worse yet, if there's a new, healthy generation made up from the artificially inseminated babies of the Sleeping Beauties, it's gonna be a rather small population. So to repopulate the world, they need to have quite a lot of kids of their own. I can't help wondering what kind of society this sort of situation would create? Maybe that's cynical thinking, but I imagine it's most likely going to be one where women are forced to bear children regardless of their own wishes, and I honestly believe it would have been kinder to let humanity die out.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what to think about this. The more I think about it, the less sure about it I become: I actually read it more or less in one go, and didn't want to put it down while reading it, but on reflection I'm not sure how convincing I found it or what I really thought of Jessie's decisions. I found her convincing -- she really did seem like a typical teenager, full of the desire to change the world, contemptuous of the adults who got it all wrong. I found the world convincing, too: the idea of such an illness spreading all over the world, the idea of how society would change and fragment in response.

But the feeling was sort of lacking. I didn't feel enraged by the situations presented, or that frightened. It somehow didn't seem emotionally real: Jessie seems to take so much for granted, and her decision process didn't work for me -- didn't convince me, didn't make me fully understand her decision.

Still, it's a worthwhile read, I think: the ideas and issues raised are interesting, and it's well written and pretty well paced. Like I said, I read it straight through, in one go, and before I tried to put my feelings down in review-form, I think I'd have said I liked it a lot.

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part of the Dangerous Visions series

The Testament of Jessie Lamb

BBC BLURB: Jane Rogers dramatises her award winning novel. Society is splintering, apocalyptic sects with fundamentalist, ecological or anti-scientific beliefs are springing up. Panic, chaos and fear reign. When Jessie's own world begins to fall apart and her best friend Sal experiences a shocking act of violence, Jessie realises it is time to take action.

Directed by Nadia Molinari

1: Jane Rogers dramatises her award winning dystopian novel about a teenage girl who decides to save humanity. Starring Holliday Grainger as Jessie Lamb.
2: When Jessie's own world begins to fall apart, she realises it is time to take action.
3: Jessie's act of heroism could save the human race, but will those closest to her help?
4: Jessie's father is adamant that she should not volunteer to be a Sleeping Beauty.
5: Jessie's plan to volunteer to become a Sleeping Beauty hits an obstacle.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

INTRODUCTION: As noted in the recent post discussing novels by Alison Pick, Julian Barnes and Patrick McGuiness, the annual Booker longlist is one the most important sources of books I would probably not hear about otherwise.

So when The Testament of Jessie Lamb appeared on the 2011 list, I became very intrigued by the novel and I decided to read it as soon as possible. The blurb below while generally accurate, is a little misleading in that the novel is a very personal one where Jessie Lamb's tale is more gripping than the world's reaction to the devastating maternal death syndrome aka MDS.

"Women are dying in their millions. Some blame scientists, some see the hand of God, some see human arrogance reaping the punishment it deserves. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times: as her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her towards the ultimate act of heroism. If the human race is to survive, it’s up to her.But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her father fears, impressionable, innocent, incapable of understanding where her actions will lead? Set just a month or two in the future, in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman’s determination to make her life count for something, as the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart."

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The Testament of Jessie Lamb is a novel advertised as literary dystopia though first and foremost it is a voice novel which kept me hooked me from the first to the last page with its poignant and emotional style.

Looking at the science fictional aspect of the novel, I had several quibbles with the ideas presented in the book - I believe that the whole setup of the MDS does not really hold water since humanity is way too diverse for something of this finesse to work, but I was fine with it as a thought experiment.

The more serious issue for me was the societal reaction to the MDS, which seemed way too rational and moderate; yes there is panic and hardship in the book, but society still stands and science still gets done, while personally I have doubts that a singularity event like MDS would not cause the total collapse of civilization.

Similarly the way science deals with MDS seemed quite simplistic if you accept the original sophistication of the virus that induced it, so basically these three issues made The Testament of Jessie Lamb more of a "scary tale" for adults rather than "serious sf".

These being said though, the novel is really compelling and its narrator Jessie Lamb of the title comes out as very plausible; a determined girl which is set on making a difference - whether her choices are stupid, courageous, right, wrong, etc is for the reader to determine and I thought her father's arguments quite grounded, so I inclined more towards his position, but not that strongly so to speak.

After a prologue which gives a hint of the future direction of the book and to which we will return in due time, the first paragraph of the novel introduces the heroine:

"I used to be as aimless as a feather in the wind. I thought stuff on the news and in the papers was for grownups. It was part of their stupid miserable complicated world, it didn’t touch me."

Compare the above with Jessie of the future as seen in the prologue:

"The logical thing is to do as he’s asked; to think about it. Indeed. Write it down. Remember it, re-imagine it, gather it together. Because it’ll be proof – won’t it? – proof that you really are doing what you want. Proof that I, Jessie Lamb, being of sound mind and good health, take full responsibility for my decision, and intend to pursue it to its rightful end."

So in a sense the huge change in the world that MDS induces - a real and much more plausible singularity if you want rather than the tech nirvana of the geeks that usually comes under that heading - radically transforms our heroine and you can read the novel as her personal odyssey, though of course there is much more.

The supporting characters - especially her father and her school friends Baz and Sal are also superbly drawn and the world building is excellent assuming you accept the assumptions above.

The combination of normality and madness in the MDS world is finely balanced in the novel and while a lot of the ideology of the book is the expected one, I was surprised a little by the nuanced portrait of science which is the usual culprit with/or religion in such dystopias; sure enough the religious fanatics are there, but there are fanatic environmentalists too, ready to bomb left and right, while Jessie ultimately renounces her "activism" as pointless.

All in all, The Testament of Jessie Lamb (A+) is a worthy Booker addition and a very well written book I would wholly recommend and which I hope will make the shortlist to show that science fiction - however not that original as sf per se - has a place on any literary prize list if the writing style is there.

[Ayşenur Nazlı · Rating 3 out of 5]

2014'te kitaba başlamış ama sıkılıp devam edememiştim. O zaman zorla okusam kesin sevmezdim. Şimdi okuduğumda yine biraz sıkıldım ama genel olarak sevdim. Konusu güzeldi ama işleyişi ve anlatımı sıkıcı ve biraz tuhaftı; bazı yerlerde karakter küçük çocuk gibiyken bazı yerlerde yaşlı gibiydi, karakter tam oturmamış gibiydi. Salgın ve ölümcül virüs konulu kitabı da tam dönemine denk getirmişim

[William Clemens · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for a lot from this book, and was interested after the whole controversy about the Arthur C Clarke award, and it just didn't deliver.

Imagine a world where there is a virus, triggered during pregnancy, which destroys the brain of the mother, killing both her and her child. Imagine that young girls are being implanted with pre-disease embryos in order to save the human race and religious and social group are rising up in violent protest. Imagine reading about all of this from the perspective of one very long winded teenage girl.

This is one of those books where I feel like part of the problem is how believable the teenager's voice is. Switching from the 'present' where Jessie is being held captive by her father, to the days before, explaining how Jessie arrived at her decision to volunteer as a 'sleeping beauty', giving her life to create a disease free child, the narrative is just long winded and flat feeling. I can believe the logic of a teenage girl, but I can't really care about it.

The world that serves as a backdrop, with families broken from the loss of mothers, houses abandoned, gangs of youth on the street, and increasingly violent protests/terrorism, should have been very gripping, but Jessie is so absorbed in her own thoughts that none of this feels that pressing or moving.

I think the real problem her though, is the length. The concept is great, the writing is good, but the arguments are so repetitive that I lost interest and just kept wishing this had been a short story.

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strong Booker longlist novel. The only reason that I've gave it 4 stars is because I've read it after the brilliant Random Acts of Senseless Violence. No other young female voice living the beginning of an apocalypse and the disintegration of the society can be as good as Lola in the Jack Womack's book. But Jesse story, of a girl fighting herself, her parents, her friends in order to save the world, is very well written and full with interesting, thought provoking ideas.

[David Hebblethwaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewed as part of the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist.

They called it MDS – Maternal Death Syndrome. No one knew where it originated, but its effects were all too familiar: to lay waste to the brains of any women who became pregnant – with no possible exceptions, because everyone carries the disease. Jessie Lamb is a teenager living near Manchester; though her father is a fertility scientist, she has little care for the state of the world – as far as she’s concerned, this is just the way things are, and any problems are for adults to deal with.

But then, through a friend, Jessie gets involved in Youth For Independence (YOFI), a movement centred on the idea that young people must repair the damage to the world which adults have caused:

[…]maybe, if we could get enough people to join us, trying to create a different way of living on the planet, maybe that in itself would start to produce an answer to MDS. A solution we couldn’t even imagine yet. (p. 29)

There’s a touch of wishful thinking in Jessie’s thought process, here; and she soon leaves YOFI when the reality doesn’t match up to what she’d hoped. But there’s also a strong desire to do something to help; and, though none of the other protest groups which spring up in the wake of MDS is attractive to Jessie, she never loses that desire.

Jessie finally believes she has found the thing she can do when she hears about the Sleeping Beauties: girls who have volunteered to be placed into a coma so they can bring to term frozen embryos which can then receive a new vaccine against MDS (frozen embryos alone can be vaccinated because they don’t carry the disease). Jessie’s father is quite enthusiastic about the prospects of this programme initially, but soon changes his tune when his daughter declares her intention to volunteer – so much so that he holds her captive to stop her; that’s where we first meet Jessie, and where she’s writing the text we hold, which is her attempt to explain herself.

The whole world might be in the grip of an epidemic in The Testament of Jessie Lamb, but the focus is decidedly intimate. Jane Rogers seems to signal this near the near the beginning of the novel, when she has Jessie and her friend Sal imagine what would happen in a world without humans – the implication being that this playful speculation is as far as the book is going to go down that particular avenue. Likewise, though there’s social unrest in The Testament, it all takes place ‘off-stage’ or on TV news reports. This novel is about Jessie, her relationships, and the decision she wants to make.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is a novel that challenges its readers to see things from its protagonist’s point of view. In the end, I can’t quite do this: I can see where Jessie is coming from – for her, it’s about having the power to do something that makes a difference, even if adults think that difference is too insignificant for the price that must be paid – and Rogers charts the course of Jessie’s thoughts clearly. But I still feel as though I’m viewing Jessie’s thought process as an outside observer, rather than truly inhabiting it. Be that as it may, The Testament is unforgiving in its treatment of hard consequences and decisions; it has the courage of its convictions and, for that, firmly deserves to be read.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange plague has emerged that strikes pregnant women. By the time it's identified, the virus (MDS, or Maternal Death Syndrome) has already spread throughout the world and is latent in everyone; triggered upon pregnancy, it causes rapid progressive brain degeneration and is invariably fatal to both mother and child. Research suggests it was genetically engineered deliberately, by combining Creutzfeldt-Jacob Syndrome with a virus, but no one knows why or by whom. A few scientists have come up with a theoretical solution but it's highly controversial and no one knows if it will work. Sixteen-year-old Jessie Lamb's father is involved with the research while Jessie herself struggles to deal with the strange new world she lives in, and to find a way that she can make a difference.

This is a highly unusual take on apocalypse fiction. Jessie's ethical and personal internal struggles, and the way they affect and are affected by her relationships with her friends and parents, are believable and detailed. Other reviews felt that too many important issues -- women's rights, environmentalism, the role of science, etc. -- are glossed over; they're right, but to me that felt appropriate since Jessie's battle is an internal, very personal one. The other issues are backdrops for what she's going through.

The book doesn't offer easy answers and although in one sense the ending is clear and definite, in another sense it's left very open to interpretation. The story left me disturbed and uneasy on several levels which, I suppose, is a mark of its power and thoughtfulness. I recommend it, but with the caveat that it's not by any means an easy or comfortable book.

[Jeremy Preacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The setup is interesting - an engineered virus triggers mad cow disease in all pregnant women - and the book is an exploration of a young woman's right to self-determination in these apocalyptic circumstances, which I do appreciate.

For whatever reason, though, it just didn't really click for me. I am inclined to suspect that it's the worldbuilding problem - I just didn't really find the larger-scale reaction to such a world-changing event convincing, and that undercut the careful character work. This is a chronic problem I have with mainstream fiction that covers sci-fi subjects. I have even less patience with protagonists in the throes of adolescent narcissism, which Jessie Lamb very much is - even while I agree with the general theory that she should have the right to make her own decisions, I just didn't particularly enjoy spending time in her head.

I can totally see why this is an important book, and one that's being taken seriously, and I approve in theory, but it's still not really the book for me.

[Kristen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is this what teenagers are really like? I don't remember being such a brat when I was 16. I remember being frustrated with the state of the world/environment but these kids are hideous. The whole "all adults deserve to die" mindset of everyone in her teen activism group is really obnoxious. I am about halfway through this book and I find Jessie (and frankly all the other teens) to be so immature and unlikeable that I don't really want to finish it.
ETA: I finished it and found her slightly less annoying at the end. But I feel like Jessie was trying to convince herself that she was doing a noble and selfless thing but underneath she was just looking for a easy way out of life's challenges. She kept talking about looking forward to the peace of becoming a Sleeping Beauty. I think she liked the idea of doing something important but she also wanted to sleep through the rest of her life.

[Willow Brooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wasted my time reading all this just to get to the end and learn *nothing!* I didn't like this story enough to continue with the second book. Too much babbling for me. I also don't like going down memory lane when it don't add to the story. Jessie was kind of a brat, therefore, this is where we part ways.

[oliver · Rating 1 out of 5]

i really did not care for this book at all. if i hadn't had to read it for class i would have dnf-ed it. the writing feels weak, confusing, and shaky. the world building is minimal to none. the protag is one of the most frustrating people i've ever read about. i wanted to chuck the book across the room every other page.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

I had no idea what to expect when I first picked this book up. The description above gives a vague but intriguing glimpse into what is actually a really strong, thought-provoking story, and once I started reading, I was swept away.

Jessie is living in a world where terroist have created and released an airborne virus which every single person in the world contracts. This virus is Maternal Death Syndrome (MDS), which is only triggered in women once they fall pregnant - which leads to their death and that of the foetus. Women are dying. There are no new babies. Once everyone alive has grown old and died, there will be no-one left. No-one.

Scientists are constantly working on finding a cure, or of finding a different way for babies to be born. Different groups form. Youth activist groups, who blame the adults for their way of living that has destroyed the world, with pollution and greed. Teenagers decide to break away from adults, and try living on their own, self-sufficiently. A religious group is formed which say the virus is God's punishment for the way people have been living. They call themselves the Noahs, believeing this virus to be today's version of the flood. A Feminist activist group forms, Feminist Link Against Men, to stop scientists experimenting on women, when they're already dying. The Animal Liberation Front forms to stop scientists experimenting on animals. And then there is a scientific breakthrough. One that could change everything, and save the human race. One that Jessie believes in, and would give her life for.

As you would guess, The Testament of Jessie Lamb is quite political, but heavily so. Those who aren't interested in politics shouldn't let this side of things put you off; the politics in the book is less about being political, and more about showing how the world reacts to this apocalypse. At times, it's quite amusing and astonishing to see what fear for the world, fear for self, can bring out in people; the opinions, the ideas. Their commonality? The urge to act, to fight, to cling on to life and to try and survive. Apart from the Noahs, who I found to be quite cult-ish, I could understand and agree with the points of each group that formed. Yet, I kept thinking, when the existence of the human race is in the balance, shouldn't ALL avenues be explored?

What I found really scary about this book is that it isn't set a silly amount of years into the future. This story could happen tomorrow. It's the creation and release of a virus. That's it. And BOOM, we're screwed. It really makes you think about the world we live in. Are scientific advances really a good thing? Sure, it's cientific advances that are helping to solve the problem in this book, but it was also scientific advances that caused the problem in the first place. Jessie also thinks about the future; if the developments work, and the human race can continue, what world are we giving them? A world with global warming due to pollution, a world that is running out of oil, food and water. Things that should have been dealt with years ago, but now may be too late. The issues politics and science and conservation overlap, and lead to an extremely thought provoking novel. So thought provoking, I don't know what I think, because good points are made for each.

But more than all this, the story is about Jessie's decision over whether to act. I don't want to spoil it for you, but wow. I'm not even sure I can discuss it without telling you what it is. But it makes you ask the question, if this was your world, whatt would you do, how far would you go, to save the human race? If there was something massive that needed to be done that you could do, would you do it, no matter the personal consequences? The thing Jessie has to decide whether she wants to do is the most selfless, bravest and awe-inspiring things I have ever read. Seriously, the whole idea brings tears to my eyes. I sincerely hope, if I was in her position, if our world ended up like Jessie's, I would make the choice to act.

If this book has a negative, it's that I didn't really care much about the characters. I just didn't warm to any of them. I cared about the what was happening, how things would pan out and what decision Jessie would make, but I didn't care that much about Jessie, her parents, her relatives, or her friends. There was just something missing for me, and I couldn't connect or relate, even though they were just normal, ordinary people. But the story itself does make up for this, and is still a really good read.

A powerful, thought-provoking, mind-blowing novel. This is one of those stories that will stay with you long after you've closed the book. I highly recommend it!

[lacy white · Rating 1 out of 5]

Find this review and others like it at https://aravenclawlibraryx.wordpress.com

tw: underage drinking, death of women and unborn children, group rape, mugging, spousal abuse, this book also treats mental illness like a burden.

In all the years I’ve been reading (which has been my whole life), there has only been one book that I absolutely could not stand at all. That book is Lord of the Flies. Maybe one day I should hate read it so I can give you all my opinion on it. Anyway, the point is I never thought I would find a book I disliked more than that book.

I was wrong.

This book. Oh wow, this book. What’s awful is that this book had so much dang potential but because of the main character and her absolutely god awful personality, the book was completely ruined. Never have I met a main character that I hated so much. Mal from the Grisha trilogy is a close second and I couldn’t stand him at all.

Okay, so let me talk about the plot because that wasn’t too bad. There is this disease called MDS, maternal death syndrome. So basically if a woman gets pregnant, they end up dying with the baby sometimes living and sometimes not. It reminded me a lot of what is going on right now with the COVID-19 virus happening. Scientists and the likes are trying to find a cure and they kind of do with Sleeping Beauties. Basically, the women (usually teenagers because it was discovered that teenagers are the perfect age to make sure a baby is viable) are put to sleep in a coma when they are pregnant thus able to give birth to a healthy baby. That is what our lovely main character, Jessie, wants to do.

I have no problem with characters sacrificing themselves for the greater good. I get that. But this girl. She acted like she was so much better than everyone else. She would coerce her parents into doing these environmental healthy things, which is great, but she was a huge ass if they slipped up (for lack of better words about it). She would get incredibly inconvenienced if they started fighting instead of you know, being concerned that their marriage is failing. She got pissy at every single person for being sad and upset when she decided to become a Sleeping Beauty. Like of course her parents and friends are going to be massively upset. What did she expect?? She was just a huge childish brat and I’m getting angry thinking about her.

Overall, don’t read this book. Complete waste of time. I am so glad I only spent one united states dollar on it or I would be even more upset. It’s going straight in the donate pile.

[Kathy Piper · Rating 2 out of 5]

I highly suspect that if I had read this book while in my teens (disregarding the unlikely event of a time warp), I might have been far more sympathetic towards the main character, Jesse, because I would likely have empathized with her deep desire to help save the world. However, now in my cynical sixties, I find Jesse to be dangerously idealistic, self centered and much akin to the radical extremists who terrorized her futuristic world and who currently terrorize ours. I find so many parallels between Jesse's emotional responses to the perils of her times and the prevailing and debilitating fears -- both real and imagined -- of today's youths who turn to suicide for escape. Because suicide is exactly what Jesse has chosen, although she paints this decision with a palette of socially redeeming colors, convinced as she is that she is helping to save all humanity from the curse inflicted by bio-terrorists. Rubbish. I do not applaud Jesse's acts, probably because I identify so much with her parents. How she rebels against them and hurts them so deeply far outweighs what minute good her sacrifice might do for humanity. If any at all. Jesse's own words reflect the thoughts of so many people who are about to end their lives: "I'm enjoying the way it is receding, all worries becoming flimsy, as easy to brush away as cobwebs." This book actually appears to encourage suicide! As I was reading, I kept hoping for a morally satisfactory ending. It didn't happen. I sincerely hope, for the sake of folks who may be contemplating ending their own lives, that this book does NOT become a movie. Any success it may have at the box office could result in more tragic endings for those on the verge of the ultimate escape.

[Marcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hoewel The Testament of Jessie Lamb al in 2011 verscheen, voelt dit heel erg als een boek van nu. Jongeren proberen politici - en hun eigen ouders - te overtuigen om beter zorg te dragen voor onze planeet. Om de CO2 uitstoot te verminderen door niet te vliegen en de auto zoveel mogelijk te laten staan. Ondertussen is de wereld in de ban van een grote ramp: het Maternal Death Syndrome. Er waart een ziekte rond die alle zwangere vrouwen treft. Als dit zo doorgaat, zullen er geen nieuwe baby's meer geboren worden en zal de menselijke soort langzaam uitsterven. Een interessante premisse die gedurende het verhaal een zeer goede uitwerking krijgt.

Ik las The Testament of Jessie Lamb op één zaterdagochtend en was zwaar onder de indruk. Ik begrijp eigenlijk niet waarom dit boek zo onbekend is. De thematiek is actueel en het verhaal is goed geschreven. Er zitten bovendien weinig clichés in het boek - iets wat voor een YA boek tegenwoordig uitzonderlijk is. Ik heb een aantal keer gehuild, maar ook gelachen. Een heel fijn boek, dat uitnodigt tot nadenken. Hoe ver ben jij bereid te gaan om de menselijke soort te redden?

Mijn complete recensie lees je op Oog op de Toekomst.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was in some ways a difficult book to read. The book is supposed to be about the maturity and struggle of a teenage girl trying to find her own voice and make her own choices separate from her parents in a post-bio-warfare world and yet the choice she ultimately makes and her reasoning for it remain firmly adolescent.
I wanted to cheer for this heroine and yet I found myself not only disagreeing with her choice but disagreeing with her entire thought process. By the end of the book I did not feel that she asserted her independence, but rather that she made a terrible decision through very adolescent reasoning; and I closed the book with an overwhelming sense of sadness for the character--which was not the feeling I was expecting.
Despite the conflicting emotions that I had I would still say this is a book worth reading, the prose is good, though falls short of the soaring praise on the back of the book, and it is thought provoking. This would make a very good book to study with a group of young women with regard to the the way that women are viewed, making choices and their dreams.

[Catriona · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 7/10 for me. I enjoyed it but I couldn't help but feel I was reading a version of the Handmaid's Tale for the facebook generation. Although we're told it was an act of biological terrorism that has stopped women being able to get pregnant successfuly and to full term, this is never really explained and the additional groups ionvolved in the more political aspect of the book are not developed enough for me. It is written in an almost diary style, so we are seeing everything through Jessie's eyes, so if Jessie isn't interested in it we don't hear any more about it. This one dimension approach has many interesting stengths though- a reserved retelling of extraordinary events, an insight into the maturing mind of a teenager desperate to change the world and a slow, creeping feeling that something big is about to happen. On reflection, i'm delighted this made the Booker longlist, but not surprised it didn't make the Shortlist. I wonder if they were aiming for the "Room" market when this was selected?

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

A strange book, but with one of my favorite dystopian premises: the human race can no longer reproduce. Jessie is a teenager dealing with this inevitability. The reason I think this book is strange has nothing to do with the premise: it's the politics. Although this book had incredible potential, it doesn't really take a stand on anything and so it half-assedly explores radical feminism, pro-life politics, children's rights movements, animal liberation etc. but doesn't take any of them to any sort of interesting conclusion. The book just limps along. There's some vaguely plausible discussion of what might happen in such a world, but not enough to interest me. Average at best. I have no idea how this made the Booker Prize longlist; you could pick any old YA dystopia and it would be at least the same calibre.

[Dhanaraj Rajan · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I bought the book I saw at the back cover the remark of HERALD stating that it is in the league of THE HANDMAID'S TALE. I loved Atwood's book. And I bought this book hoping it to be a good read. But I was disappointed. May be I had hoped too big. Jane Rogers is no where near Atwood. Neither the story nor the language kept me engaged. In fact it was a tiresome read. I dragged laboriously myself to complete this novel.

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has an absolutely disastrous rating on GoodReads, despite being a Booker longlist. I tried the first chapter and was intrigued, so decided to give it a try. It had its highs and lows, but I can see why this book has such a low ratings. Jessie Lamb herself is an infuriating heroine and the book has a frustrating take on the overdone feminist dystopia (and by that I mean, dystopian novels where the dystopia is anti-woman).

In the near future, someone (we will never know who or why) has released a virus which is known as MDS (maternal death syndrome). Like zombieism in the Walking Dead, everyone in the world is infected, but it is only triggered by a certain event. In this case, it's pregnancy - when a woman is pregnant, her immune system drops a bit so that her body doesn't attack the embryo. It is this drop in the immunity that allows MDS to take hold. The symptoms of MDS are similar to mad cow disease. It's brutal. And it kills both mom and baby, so that no new children can be born.

The focus of the fallout from this disease is all on pregnant women. Presumably, anything that drops a person's immunity could trigger MDS activating. All chemotherapy/immunosuppressants are probably done for - sorry people with cancer or lupus. How about if you are stressed and have poor nutrition and are fighting another major disease? Does MDS activate then? We don't know, because really MDS is just a mechanism to kill pregnant women in this story.

Jessie Lamb is a normal teenage girl who comes of age in this dystopian world. The response to MDS by the British population is pretty wild. For some reason, animal activists are on the rise in response to MDS (because of animal testing). That is not the direction I thought extremism would take in response to a potential future without any more babies. It also made me realize that animal activism groups who use terrorism as a tactic like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) have been pretty quiet in the past few years. It seems like the last time I heard about them or ELF (Earth Liberation Front) was in the 1990s or early 2000s. Besides pro-animal terrorists, there are also pro-women terrorists. By the end, these terrorist groups are butting heads and running into each other in almost comical ways.

Meanwhile, there is a glimmer of hope for the future of humanity: girls can be impregnated by pre-MDS embryos from couples who used IVF before MDS disseminated. See, there is now a MDS vaccine, which is not useful for anyone living since everyone has MDS. But it can be used on these pre-MDS embryos. I'm pretty sure vaccines work by training a person's immune system, and I'm almost positive a fertilized egg does not HAVE an immune system, so I'm not sure how they can be vaccinated. And given that it's sooo tricky to figure out the dosage of a vaccine for small children (which is why children under 12 were the last ones to get a COVID vaccine approved for their age group), how did they figure out the dosage for EMBRYOS (before they are born) even if they did have an immune system? Who knows! Science is not getting in the way of the message of this book.

Anyway, the girls - the younger the better, apparently, because science - are known as Sleeping Beauties. They get impregnated, put in a medically induced coma, and then die (because the MDS is triggered) and the baby is hopefully born healthy. This solution seems like no solution at all. MDS has only been running rampant for a few years (I think). The women being used as living incubators are healthy, young women (16 is the ideal). And each girl can only give birth to one child (for whatever reason, twins are not even considered). There is no guarantee that the girl will even have one healthy, live child. So at best you are getting 1 life for 1 death, and at worst 0 lives for 2 deaths. How is that going to help future generations? Wouldn't it be better to wait a few years to try to find alternatives? This book also barely touches that the scientists have decided to use THEIR OWN SPERM to fertilize all these IVF eggs (I thought these were pre-MDS eggs?!?) so Jessie's father is creepily going to be the father to hundreds of children - including his own grandchild - and he never seems to think this may be wrong?!? And also maybe they should've diversified the gene pool?!?!)

I spent a lot of time confused about what the message was supposed to be. Is it about how foolish and rash young adults are? Is it that they are easy to lure into extremism? Is it that if you don't have an open dialogue with your child, and instead praise the Sleeping Beauties and then promptly abandon your family for weeks because you got in a fight with your wife, then your daughter will try to win your attention/praise by becoming a Sleeping Beauty and your only choice will be to lock her up in your basement? So maybe you should be a better parent/person and treat your child like a person who has valuable opinions or else they will turn to extremism?!?

I looked for interviews with Rogers to try to figure out what she was trying to say. Apparently she wanted to write a book about a child/parent relationship in an extreme, but thought people would be too unsympathetic if her teenage heroine was a suicide bomber (probably right). This is a good story goal and Jessie's conflict with her parents is at the heart of this book - but I think it's hard when the audience has little sympathy for Jessie and her choices. When locking your daughter in the basement like a serial killer is somehow LESS insane than the daughter's choice to commit suicide due to misguided martyrism, then there are no winners.

[Clare Greenup · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled a bit here. Not with the writing. I just couldn’t align myself with her decision. It got me thinking though, which is the whole point, I think.

[Anna Ryan-Punch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review originally appeared in Viewpoint on Books for Young Adults.

The surprise winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2012, The Testament of Jessie Lamb is Rogers’ first foray into science fiction. Jessie’s world has changed vastly in a short amount of time. A virus, released by unknown biological terrorists, has infected everyone on earth. But the dormant virus only becomes active when a woman is pregnant, activating a prion disease that quickly causes the mother’s brain to eat away at itself, killing her and the unborn child. Scientists have dubbed the virus Maternal Death Syndrome, and there is no treatment. The few babies born before the release of MDS will be the last: there will be no new parents and children in Jessie’s lifetime; the human race will gradually die out. While researchers race furiously to find a cure and a way to produce new healthy babies, Jessie and her friends aren’t taking the news lying down. Their parents’ generation screwed up the earth, and it’s time for the kids to take back the power and live sustainably, without the cruelty and destruction done in the name of science. Through her scientist father’s research, Jessie learns of a possible way to circumvent MDS, for new uninfected babies to be born – though at the cost of the mothers’ lives. The result of Jessie’s obsession with these creepily named ‘Sleeping Beauties’ is where we find her as the book opens – chained to a radiator by her father, kept prisoner. But Jessie is not giving up on her quest to make a difference; not without a fight.

The general premise of The Testament of Jessie Lamb is not a particularly new one, it has been explored in books such as The Handmaid’s Tale, films like Children of Men and the comic series Y: The Last Man. But this doesn’t detract from Rogers’ novel being a tightly written, fast-paced read that is carefully plotted to drive the reader to keep turning those pages – it really is a novel you can happily read in one sitting. The science is precise enough to be plausible (using a combination of actual diseases to create the fictional MDS gives the book a pleasing credibility), and the inclusions of media reactions and practical prevention systems (all women have Implanon inserted to prevent pregnancy) ground the science fiction elements securely in the real world.

Especially interesting in terms of reading the book as YA (though it was not originally published as such) is the political activism of Jessie and her friends. Jessie joins YOFI (Youth for Independence) to fight for children’s’ rights, Jessie’s friend Sal joins FLAME (Feminist Link Against Men) after being repeatedly raped, and Nat joins the ALF (Animal Liberation Front) to rescue lab animals. This sort of linking of the personal with the explicitly political has been often rare in YA novels. Rogers details the actions of the groups, the infighting that goes with it, and the extreme political opinions that each group represents. If man is by nature a political animal then these teenagers are truly natural, and it’s fascinating to see this depicted so centrally in the novel:

‘We wanted the power. It was us who were going to have to live with the catastrophe they had made. MDS was the worst of it but there was everything else too – wars, floods, famines. People had just carried on pleasing themselves – but now they would have to stop. “They can’t tell us what to do any more,” said Jacob. “No,” said Lisa, “they owe us.”’

This approach is not without faults, however – many characters are thinly sketched and seem to pop up only when their particular cause is needed to feature in the plot. Jessie’s scientist father does a lot of patient explaining: she fondly refers to him as ‘Father of Wisdom’, but often this is the only way the reader gets an explanation of what has happened to turn Jessie’s world upside down. As such, it feels a bit like he is wheeled out whenever exposition is needed. And the central notion of the book – MDS – is unsatisfyingly vague in origin:

‘”A scientist must have done it.”
“But why?”
“Power? Religion? Your guess is as good as mine, Jessie.”’

As Jessie’s story progresses, the reader becomes more and more uneasy about her choices. Her inherent narcissism means that she can’t see the effects her mission to become a Sleeping Beauty is having on her family and friends: she is too blinded by her chance to save the world. Her drive to produce life through her own death is what has caused her father to resort to imprisoning her, and this single-mindedness adds a sense of fatalism to the book that is as interesting as it is unsettling.

Rogers’ Booker Prize-longlisted novel is an exciting, readable book that traverses the personal, scientific and political, and will interest even readers who are not traditional fans of the speculative fiction genre.

[Scruffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the very near future biological terrorists release a virus called MDS which kills women when they get pregnant. Jessie Lamb is a sixteen year old girl trying to make sense of the changed world she finds herself in. It's quite a terrifying set-up for a novel, a world where we can no longer produce children. For the first time the human race can finally see it's end.

The story is told from the first person perspective of Jessie Lamb. She is frightened by the future and angry at adults for leaving the world in such a mess. Jessie is very much a child, in fact sometimes the book reads in a similar way to Young Adult fiction, with a young protagonist dealing with the problems of being a teenager. It's written with quite simple language making it a very easygoing read.

Your opinion the book will probably depend on your reaction to Jessie. She is a very typical teenage girl, sometimes I was frustrated with her because her opinions seemed short-sighted and naive. However once I reminded myself that she was a teenager her outlook made perfect sense to me. She is essentially still a child, her thoughts and opinions are not fully formed or well thought out and in this way I found her to be convincing as a teenager.

I think having a young girl as a protagonist was a very good choice. She looks at the world around her and is able to see things in a much more black and white way than an adult would, really cutting to the heart of the matter. Jessie and her friends come to believe that it's the adults fault for getting them into this situation and that the human race is being punished for all the ways that they have been polluting the world and their over reliance on science. It's a very childish and naive view of things and if Jessie's character was an adult then the book would have come across as very preachy, however these opinions are easier to swallow coming from a teenager. Jessie has plenty of opinions but she never thinks that she has all the answers, I thought this process of questioning her own opinions and looking for meaning to be the most interesting part of the book.

I found the world of this book to be a little hard to buy into, the MDS virus is a huge thing which would have a great impact on society as a whole. While individual people were affected by the reality of their situation in a variety of different ways I didn't feel like the world at large really changed much at all. For the most part life carried on as normal and I found that quite hard to believe. There were some interesting ideas about how young men would start to act differently around women when they knew what would happen if they got pregnant. I thought that aspect of the world was very well thought out.

Eventually scientists come up with a way to combat MDS, it's not an easy solution and it throws up quite a moral conundrum. The book doesn't make any statements on whether this is right or wrong it just presents us with a variety of different view points on the problem and leaves us to decide for ourself's what we think. Jessie's ultimate decision is a difficult one and left me feeling very uneasy, it's certainly a book which will be staying with me for a while. From early on it's quite obvious where the story is heading, some people might criticize the book for this but I think that the knowledge of where all this is going gives everything a real weight and a lot of the smaller moments feel much more important and bitter-sweet because of it. I don't think that the book could have ended in any other way, anything else would have felt like a cop-out. At the end I was left feeling very satisfied and affected by Jessie's journey.

For more of my reviews please visit http://www.scruffyfiction.co.uk

[ManOfLaBook.com · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Tes­ta­ment of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers is an award win­ning science-fiction book tak­ing place in the near future. This is a book that out of my com­fort zone as I usu­ally don’t read this genre (I used to), but I’m glad I read and think it’s impor­tant to read books which you might not otherwise.

Jessie Lamb is 16 years old, daugh­ter of a British sci­en­tist attempt­ing to find a cure for MDS, a nasty virus. MDS was unleashed upon the world by an unknown group; the virus attacks preg­nant women and their babies killing the woman before she is able to give birth.

Jessie is flirt­ing with activism, not using a car when unnec­es­sary, join­ing youth groups and more. But she finds new mean­ing when sci­en­tists dis­cover that women under 16 ½ have great chances of pro­duc­ing a baby, cre­at­ing a future for human kind at the expense of their own lives.

The Tes­ta­ment of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (web­site | Face­book.)almost reads like a clas­sic dystopian novel and I’m sure it will become one soon enough. I found the story sur­pris­ing with sev­eral gen­tle twists, every time I thought I knew what was going to hap­pen, I found out I was wrong.

The writ­ing is excel­lent, but the book is not your fast paced vari­ety. The story is nar­rated from the point of view of a teenage girl, the chap­ters begin by reliv­ing the past and end with a journal/diary entry detail­ing the present. While at first this type of nar­ra­tive arrange­ment was strange, it actu­ally worked won­der­fully book and its many themes.

Even though the book takes place in the near future, the themes which are dealt within it are con­tem­po­rary. Legal age, con­sent, society’s will­ing­ness to tear each other apart, to sac­ri­fice “the oth­ers” for your own moral­ity and our favorite social pas­time: force­fully enforce your jaded morals on the rest.

When I was first offered to read this book I hes­i­tated, to be hon­est I only accepted because it looked inter­est­ing, I thought my wife would like it as well and because it was long listed for the Man Booker Prize. I’m not usu­ally much for science-fiction and/or dystopian books. I liked The Hunger Games but have yet to read the rest of the series and loved science-fiction as a kid, but haven’t read a sci-fi book in years.

I am always one to preach that peo­ple should read out of their com­fort zones, yet I rarely fol­low my own advice. And here, the oppor­tu­nity pre­sented itself and I took it.
Do you know what I found out?
I was right, not only am I happy I read this book, as it gave me much fod­der to think about after I fin­ished it, but I believe that I am a bet­ter reader for doing so.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the synopsis says, Jessie Lamb is an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times. The premise of The Testament of Jessie Lamb is an absolutely fascinating one -- an act of biological terrorism has created a situation in which everybody carries a virus within them that has the potential to kill them, but the virus is triggered only in pregnant women and when it is triggered, it kills them. The very survival of the human race depends on finding a way to deal with this horrible reality, but the story is really just centered around Jessie. She gets caught up in social and political movements, searching for a way for her life to make a difference in the messed-up world that she suddenly find herself in; and she does eventually find it, though I won't say much more than that because part of the story's beauty is the way in which it unfolds around Jessie and the reader starts to figure out what is really going on.

I read this book for a BOOK CLUB discussion hosted by Jen at Devourer of Books and Nicole at Linus's Blanket, and I think it was a fantastic choice for this sort of discussion group. I wasn't completely blown away by the book, but there were some really interesting themes dealing with reproductive rights and women that are particularly salient given today's political climate, so it made for an absolutely wonderful discussion. This is definitely a book that I would recommend for book clubs, as it's sure to trigger a lot of debate and discussion. And while I wasn't blown away, I definitely enjoyed reading Jane Rogers's book and found myself reading it fairly quickly. All in all, The Testament of Jessie Lamb was definitely a worthwhile read.

Full Disclosure: I received an advance reading copy of The Testament of Jessie Lamb from the publisher (Harper Perennial) to facilitate participation in the BOOK CLUB discussion hosted by Linus's Blanket & Devourer of Books.