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The Testament of Jessie Lamb

by Jane Rogers (Goodreads Author)

3.11 of 5 stars 3.11 · rating details · 727 ratings · 203 reviews

A rogue virus that kills pregnant women has been let loose in the world, and nothing less than the survival of the human race is at stake.

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 time...more

Paperback, 256 pages

Published May 15th 2012 by Harper Perennial (first published June 6th 2011)

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May 28, 2013 Elas Büchertruhe rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Was würde passieren, wenn Frauen plötzlich nicht mehr in der Lage sind, Kinder zu bekommen?
Richtig, die Menschheit sterbe früher oder später aus.
Dieses Thema hat Jane Rogers in ihrem Roman verarbeitet.
Die 16 jährige Jessie wächst in einer Zeit auf, in der Frauen sich während ihrer Schwangerschaften mit einem Virus infizieren, dessen Symptome der Kreutzfeld jacobschen Krankheit ähnelt. Sie sterben und auch ihre Embryos haben keinerlei Chance auf Leben.

Jessie will diese Tatsache, aber um nichts au...more Was würde passieren, wenn Frauen plötzlich nicht mehr in der Lage sind, Kinder zu bekommen?
Richtig, die Menschheit sterbe früher oder später aus.
Dieses Thema hat Jane Rogers in ihrem Roman verarbeitet.
Die 16 jährige Jessie wächst in einer Zeit auf, in der Frauen sich während ihrer Schwangerschaften mit einem Virus infizieren, dessen Symptome der Kreutzfeld jacobschen Krankheit ähnelt. Sie sterben und auch ihre Embryos haben keinerlei Chance auf Leben.

Jessie will diese Tatsache, aber um nichts auf der Welt akzeptieren und ist sich sicher, sie ist die Einzige, die die Zukunft der Menschen retten kann.
Ich muss ganz ehrlich gestehen, im Laufe des Romans bekam ich immer mehr Probleme mit der Protagonistin. Jessie war mir zu naiv, leichtgläubig, egoistisch und irgendwie auch zu fanatisch.
Ich fand sie als Charakter schon recht gut dargestellt, dennoch gab es wenig Sympathie für sie und es wurde auch im Laufe der Zeit eher schlimmer als besser. Durch ihre oft unüberlegten Handlungen und Gedankengänge erschien sie mir bald recht unglaubwürdig.
Jedoch waren auch die anderen Figuren in ihrer Art und Weise recht extrem dargestellt. So waren mir weder Vater noch Mutter sympathisch, wobei der Vater für mich noch die interessantere Rolle in seinen Denkansätzen hatte.
Nichtsdestotrotz war die Handlung interessant und wurde auch zeitweise echt spannend. Dies allein hat mich zum Weiterlesen gereizt, schließlich wollte ich wissen, wie die Lösung des Problems sich entwickeln würde.
Ich hatte es eigentlich recht schnell vorhersehen können, hatte mir jedoch irgendwie ein anderes Ende erhofft. Allein durch den Klappentext hatte ich schon etwas andere Erwartungen und fand den Ausgang der Geschichte für mich nicht nachvollziehbar.
Der Schreibstil ist sehr leicht und angenehm zu lesen. Immer wieder erlebt der Leser Jessies Gedanken, die ihrem Alter entsprechend schon mal sehr radikal und ungestüm sein können.

Fazit:
Alles in allem war dieser Roman recht gut, wobei ich das Gefühl hatte, das aus der Geschichte mehr rausgeholt hätte werden können. Beeindruckt bin ich von den Emotionen, die diese Protagonistin in mir ausgelöst hat, ich hätte ihr zum Schluss am liebsten das Buch an den Kopf geworfen! Nicht weil die Handlung schlecht war, sondern weil Jessie mir einfach auf den Keks ging. (less)

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Feb 08, 2013 Jeremy Preacher rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi

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....more

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Feb 01, 2013 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more

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Oct 24, 2012 Eve rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I started this book expecting a well-crafted work of speculative fiction: After all, the premise is that in the near future a disease has made pregnancy terminal. The idea has been used before (Children of Men has a similar backstory), but there is plenty of room for other authors to explore it. However, the disease is really a MacGuffin; the story isn't about curing the disease or building a different kind of world. In that sense it is similar to Saramago's Blindness, although Blindness is a mu...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Rosie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopian, teenage

This was such a strange book. Deliberately morally ambiguous as you never quite know what the 'right' outcome is, and it definitely fits into the magical realism category as some parts are uncomfortably realistic though it's set in a world with a fictional virus. It left me with an uncomfy bleak feeling but stayed on my mind, but it's not something I'd like to read again. I personally write (bad) bleak stories about dystopias or similar, and I hope to God my stories aren't as depressing as this...more

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Jul 25, 2012 cupcake rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am an English teacher, so if there is one thing in which I am well-versed, it is literary symbolism. Teach it, love it, know it. When done well, it's subtle enough to present a challenge but not so obvious that a third grader can spot it.

In the case of The Testament of Jessie Lamb, the symbolism is IN YOUR FACE. You can't avoid it, even if you prefer your books simple and approachable. It permeates this book like stink from a skunk.

Let's start with the first obvious symbol: Jessie Lamb. The na...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Ian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was, I believe, longlisted for the Booker, but since the plot summary made it clear it was sf-written-by-a-mainstream-author I picked up a copy just before Waterstone's abolished their 3-for-2 promotion. And it's certainly sf, in the same way The Handmaid's Tale or Children of Men are. Or even Nineteen Eighty-four. At some point in the near-future, a virus is released which infects everyone. But when women become pregnant, it turns into full-blown Creuzfeld-Jakob Syndrome and is always fata...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Lucy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2012

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is the story of Jessie Lamb (believe it or not). Jessie lives in a world where humans are dying out. Every human is infected with a deadly virus which is activated when a woman become pregnant. This means that no new babies can be born and Jessie's generation will be the last humans if a solution isn't found. Jessie wants to save the world, and she will go to any lengths to do it.

This book is listed as a contemporary novel but it actually reads much more like Young A...more

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Jul 11, 2012 drey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-reads, sci-fi

I finished The Testament of Jessie Lamb earlier this week, and am still processing it. Jessie’s world is turned upside down by a new plague, one they call Maternal Death Syndrome (MDS) because it kills pregnant women. She’s only sixteen, though, and doesn’t think much of it until she knows someone who dies from MDS. Then everything about her world seems alien and dangerous, from the talking heads to the gender-segregated groups to the politics of the day.

When we first meet Jessie, she’s locked u...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Grace rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book's one of those mindwormy ones, I keep coming back to it. But while usually I rerturn to books to mull over themes or science, in this one I'm coming back to Jessie. She is really, REALLY interesting.

Teenagers are hard to write. They're flighty and annoying and passionate and inconsistent, and Rogers writes Jessie's internal monologue perfectly. We meet Jessie in the aftermath of the Maternal Death Syndrome virus, and the shock's mostly worn off - people have refocused on solutions, or...more

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May 31, 2012 Luanne Ollivier rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 kil...more 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, 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.
(less)

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May 26, 2012 Zohar - ManOfLaBook.com rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

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 pregnan...more 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 (less)

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May 04, 2012 Nikki rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction

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...more

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Apr 28, 2012 David Hebblethwaite rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more 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.(less)

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Apr 23, 2012 Melissa Caldwell rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was thoroughly thought provoking. The premise is unsettling and was well presented by Jane Rogers. Jessie Lamb is a normal girl growing up in a world that is changing. Women can get pregnant, but they die. The babies too. Scientists are trying to figure out what is going on and how to stop it, but at what cost? Girls. Girls are either volunteering or being coerced into becoming "sleeping beauties" and thus basically killing themselves for the good of human kind.

This book brought up so...more

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Apr 10, 2012 Jenni rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library, sf, sf-mistressworks

Excellent book. For one thing, just the sort of thing I go for - post-apocalypse or apocalypse-in-the-making, with plenty of questions about how humans can/should/would adapt and react. (For comparison: a frequent re-read of mine is George Stewart's Earth Abides.) I though the teenage protagonist was very well drawn, and the direct conflict between her and her parents made it into something quite out of the usual way of teenage protagonists, which would more normally have written the parents out...more

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Oct 09, 2011 andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hm. I thought from practically the first few chapters that I wasn't going to like this book, that I didn't like Jessie much at all, that it would be tough to even finish the book. Nevertheless, here I am, just past midnight; 've finished it in just a handful of hours, and I'm satisfied. It's good. Not great, but I'll remember it, which is more than can be said about many other books.

I like apocalyptic books, probably even more than post-apocalyptic books, though they scare me more (obviously). I...more

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Sep 30, 2011 Minty rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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. Th...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Jenny McPhee rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Mother of the People”: Biology as Destiny in the Dystopias of Jane Rogers, P.D. James, and Margaret Atwood

Imagine a world where the human race can no longer reproduce itself due to a virus, a likely product of bioterrorism, that attacks a woman’s brain at the moment of conception, killing her within days. This is the premise of Jane Rogers’s recent novel The Testament of Jesse Lamb. In P.D. James’s The Children of Men (1992), an equally mysterious virus renders all sperm on Earth, frozen and ot...more

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Apr 08, 2012 Scruffy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 leavin...more 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 (less)

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May 29, 2012 William Clemens rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 pers...more

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May 13, 2013 lost pages rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Inhalt:
Die junge Jessie Lamb und der Rest der Weltbevölkerung haben MTS. Gefährlich wird dieser Virus aber erst für Frauen, wenn diese schwanger werden, dann zerfrisst MTS deren Gehirn und Mutter und Kind sterben qualvoll. Sollte nicht bald ein Heilmittel gefunden werden, steht die Menschheit vor dem Aus.

Die Wissenschaftler suchen auf Hochtouren nach einer Lösung und mit den "schlafenden Schönen" scheint schon einmal ein Anfang gefunden. Junge Schwangere werden in ein künstliches Koma versetzt u...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Michele rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia-apocalypse, ya

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...more

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Aug 12, 2011 Kirsty Darbyshire rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle

I don't quite know what to say about this book. I would probably never have come across it if it hadn't been longlisted for this year's Booker Prize. It was a quick and easy read that I enjoyed, well written, decent plot, nothing really wrong with it.

But.

In the context of the best books of the year as the Booker prize is supposed to be looking for I thought it fell short. The story is a "near future dystopia" set somewhere very like the present day where pregnancy has become fatal and the human...more

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Jun 06, 2013 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, ya

I loved how this future created by bio-terrorism is so plausible, and the "solutions" are grounded in science, terrifying, and heartbreaking.

Wonderful writing, Jane Rogers really gets into the swirling passions of the teenage mind. Told in first person by a bright girl with a resolve to do the unthinkable, I could not stop reading. The world is on the brink and Jessie and her friends all find very different paths toward a better world. One thing they all have in common is disgust at the world th...more

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May 20, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

As a novel, absorbing and respectably good but not great; as a "thought-piece," compelling, especially when read against other works addressing the same themes. In particular, Never Let Me Go, The Handmaid's Tale, and Oryx and Crake all came to mind even before I reached Rogers's acknowledgments to Ishiguro and Atwood in the back matter. (Also, the book's epigraph, from Iphigenia at Aulis, is more than trivially apt.)

A few minor details aside, The Testament of Jessie Lamb shares its key premise...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Nicholas Whyte rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1912384.html

Jane Rogers is best known for her mainstream novel Mr. Wroe's Virgins, but I get the impression that her work has often teetered on the edge of the genre, and The Testament of Jessie Lamb is certainly sf. I was really impressed with it; it felt in some way to be a response to the Wyndham-esque cosy catastrophe, in that it is a story of an ordinary middle-class girl in Manchester and what happens to her when catastrophe strikes. In this case the catastrop...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Allie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 29, 2012 Joanne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ya-dystopian

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 fa...more 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!(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Nov 23, 2011 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-2011

I wasn’t expecting much of this but in fact I was very impressed by it - very clever, beneath its rather light, readable, YA prattling. Another unreliable narrator, in this case a naive but noble 16-year-old trying to save the world. So far, so YA - but I think that (by accident or more likely by design) there is a much deeper strand here, about us all being faced with the now-seemingly-inevitable apocalypse and the appalling complexity of it; about the futility of the many worthy (or not) prote...more

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About Jane Rogers

Jane Rogers has written five novels & the script for the BBC adaptation of "Mr. Wroe's Virgins," directed by Danny Boyle & starring Minnie Driver & Jonathan Pryce. Her "Living Image" won the Somerset Maugham Award, & "Promised Lands" won the Writers Guild Award for best novel. In 1994 Rogers was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in Lancashire, England.

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“Perfect crime,' he said softly.
'Yes?'
'Persuade an innocent, idealistic young girl that the future of the human race depends on her sacrificing her own life. She will come into hospital as trustingly as a lamb to the slaughter. She will welcome the implantation of a baby that will kill her. She'll lie there while her brain is destroyed for nine whole months, and no police will arrest you, no court will judge you, you'll get away scot free. At the end of nine months she'll be taken off life support and she'll be completely dead. And no one will be blamed.” — 2 people liked it

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