Rogers, Jane: The Testament of Jessie Lamb
The Testament of Jessie Lamb (2011)
Written by: Jane Rogers
Genre: Futuristic Fiction/Post-Apocalyptic
Pages: 348 (Trade Paperback)
Why I Read It: I'm always interested in what I label to be "literary SF." It's the kind of stuff that clearly has SF trappings but it published in the literary market, and it has the benefit of attracting both SF readers and literary readers alike. I've read and loved books like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Saramago's Blindness, even Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. When I heard about The Testament of Jessie Lamb, it was during the discussion of this year's Arthur C. Clarke award nominees (and this book eventually won), and when I saw the premise, I knew I wouldn't be able to resist the book for long. Thankfully, I got it for my birthday, so reading it became a priority. :)
The premise: ganked from BN.com: 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 times. As her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her toward the ultimate act of heroism. She wants her life to make a difference. But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her scientist father fears, impressionable, innocent, and incapable of understanding where her actions will lead?
Set in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman's struggle to become independent of her parents. As the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart, Jessie begins to question her parents' attitudes, their behavior, and the very world they have bequeathed her.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Nay, in that I won't tell you how it ends, but I am DEFINITELY going to spoil what the back of the book won't, so if you want to remain completely surprised, skip to "My Rating." Everyone else, onward!
As soon as I started reading, I was immediately reminded, in a good way, of other works. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, in that we see a woman locked in a room against her will, and there's a reference to a man who's doing it to her, whom I immediately assumed was a husband or boyfriend (I was wrong). But I was also reminded of the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper," for many of the same reasons, and it was this short story reference that stuck with me, the parallel that men know better than women in regards to what women need, but the very act of being locked up leads to a kind of determination, a desire for freedom. Hell, at one point, Rogers makes a direct reference to Gilman's work (page 67):
The wallpaper is a faded creamy colour, once it was yellow. It has a faint blotchy pattern which you can't make out. But this morning for a few minutes the sun shone, and then the pink carpet and yellow walls really glowed, and I thought, my prison is beautiful!
There are other nods to other works. Right from the start, I felt like this book was an exercise, an answer in some ways to P.D. James' The Children of Men, a book about a future where babies are no longer born, and humanity is dying out. Here in The Testament of Jessie Lamb, being pregnant means that women will die, which means that getting pregnant isn't a desirable thing to do, which means that, naturally, humanity is dying.
It's funny reading this after M.M. Buckner's The Gravity Pilot. The two books are nothing alike, except they're set in the near future, and while I labeled The Gravity Pilot as futuristic SF, Jane Roger's The Testament of Jessie Lamb is clearly post-apocalyptic. The main drive of the story is survival, but not necessarily for the main character so much as the survival of humanity. To ensure humanity continues. And there was definitely an event that led to this post-apocalyptic future: the release of the toxin (or whatever it was) that guarantees the death of women once they get pregnant. Hello, MDS. It's interesting, too, that we never get the answer of HOW everyone gets infected with it, nor do we learn WHY people were infected with it. But it happened, and there's enough theories floating through out the book that doesn't make you feel like you've been shafted. And more to the point, the origin of MDS isn't the point of the book. The point of the book is how to beat it, how to ensure that future babies can be born without it, so humanity can thrive.
All in all, it's a rather straightforward book. We meet Jessie and her parents. We learn about her extended family and her friends. We learn what MDS is doing to the world and how it's creating all these fractured tensions is society. One of the things I really admired about this book is that while there are protesters, there are different kinds of protesters. No one can really unite: there's FLAME, which is a womens' rights defense group above all else, who wants scientists to stop using women and girls to find a cure. There's the animal rights people, who don't want scientists to use animal to find a cure, and then there's the Noahs, who are more religious than not, and who are very angry about the proposed process of human seed being implanted in animals. No one really agrees, but everyone's angry about different things. And this is utterly believable. It makes sense that in this kind of crisis, humanity wouldn't come together and agree on a solution. There's be fractions, people who want one thing and think everything else is immoral and wrong. Who think each other's groups are immoral and wrong.
The book is essentially all about Jessie's decision to become a Sleeping Beauty: a girl who will allow a fertilized egg to be artificially inseminated (an egg that's not afflicted with MDS), and then be put on ice, allowing the baby to grow and be born, and after the birth, will be dead. It's a controversial decision, one that FLAME rejects (women shouldn't be used as lab rats), and it's an ironic decision, because it was Jessie's father who told her all about it, and how it was such a great way to help save humanity, but he never expected that his own daughter would want to volunteer, and of course, once he learns she has, he's adamantly against it. So it's her father holding her hostage at the start, and that created a far more interesting dynamic, because Jessie is sixteen, and by all rights, still a kid.
And here's where it gets interesting to me as a reader, especially after reading the author's interview at the back of the book: the essential question of whether or not Jessie was truly a hero. The author views her as such, and Jessie clearly views herself that way. Yet from an outsider's POV, I just kept seeing Jessie as a suicidal girl. Her home life was unraveling, breaking under the tension of so much stress (the character of Aunt Mandy did a lot to develop the stresses Jessie's family was put under, as well as illustrate some of the personalities that would develop in this kind of world), and truthfully, what did she have to live for? Think about being a teen, and how nebulous the future seems. If your life sucks in the NOW, then you can't imagine things getting better. And suicidal personalities are going to take whatever opportunity arises. In Jessie's case, her method of suicide might provide humanity a chance to last just a little bit longer.
And therein is the crux of the issue. I think in any other time, if Jessie was having a crappy childhood, she would've been suicidal. She would've chosen pills or something to get that attention and leave the world. I don't think the author would agree with me, nor do I expect all readers would too. But that's what kept me from embracing Jessie's decision and her desire to sacrifice herself. It's why I understood, completely, what Jessie's parents were trying to do by holding her captive.
Then there's the question: who's really being selfish here? If Jessie gets to follow through, to sacrifice her life for the life of a child, that's pretty selfless, right? Yet her actions also rob her parents of spending the rest of their lives with her, and clearly, they love her. From that point of view, it's a selfish decision. Yet on the flip side, by wanting to keep their daughter all to themselves, the parents are being selfish too, because Jessie's sacrifice could help humanity hold on all the bit longer.
So it's a fascinating read for that alone, and it makes the ending quite compelling.
Here's a few snippets of the prose that stood out to me. Page 65:
You can't ever unknow things once you've heard them. They become a part of you, they work inside you like yeast in the dough Sal and I made one weekend. You leave it on a board with a tea-towel over it, and it starts rising and changing its shape. It swells until it's become something else altogether.
And then this section, when Jessie's going over her decision and what it'll mean for others, starting with the boyfriend (page 171):
You can't go round to his house, I told myself. You can't go and ask him to be nice; you can't kiss him and hug him, because he's right, it's a lie. You love what you're going to do more than you love him. It was like I'd stopped being human. If I went on like this I'd be alone. Upsetting Mum and Dad; making my friends angry; leaving them all behind.
Lastly, this section after her father has quit work because his boss is letting Jessie go through the Sleeping Beauty program (and that's important because her dad works for the lab that's spearheading this). Page 204:
All the time I was cooking […] I was conscious of him in the spare room giving off rays of bad temper like a piece of radioactive waste.
Nitpicks, there were a few things that nagged me about the prose. For example, I caught some shifting between present and past tense, all on the same page. That was jarring. Also jarring was the mention of Blockbuster in this post-apocalyptic future. I don't know about the UK, and maybe that's the difference, but I had to wonder how far along this book was when Blockbuster announced its bankruptcy in the US. Chances are, the book was already at the publisher, but even so, Blockbuster has been obsolete for years (hence the bankruptcy), and I can't believe that any author would choose to show Blockbuster up and running in the future. Like I said, maybe the climate was different in the UK, but that's an oddity that dates the book in a strange way. Especially when you could've just said video store and been done with it.
My Rating: Excellent
This is a great and easy book to recommend. For fans of literary SF, who enjoy chewing over futures found in books like The Handmaid's Tale, Children of Men, and Never Let Me Go. For readers of feminist SF, because there are a lot of things to discuss and debate in this little beast. For readers who want to read more SF but don't want to be bombarded with the science of it all, and mostly, for readers who want to see a mature post-apocalyptic story that isn't just an excuse for a romance. This book raises big questions, and gives you more than enough to find the answers that make sense to you. And while I haven't read the other Arthur C. Clarke nominees, this was a great pick to win, and it was better than some of the books nominated for the 2012 Hugo (sadly, the US didn't get this book until 2012, so that's why American readers didn't know to nominate it. I wonder if it'll be eligible for the 2013 Hugos?). It's a compelling and satisfying read, and it's one I plan to revisit one day.
Cover Commentary: I like the cover a lot. It implies desolation, which I really like. However, every time I glance at it, I think it's some kind of colonial period art. At a glance, It's a guy with longish hair pulled into a ponytail, where one of those jackets with coattails. I'm also not sure what scene this image is supposed to be portraying (there is an argument for one scene in the book, but it's one scene), since the majority of the book takes place in a house or in the city. Anyway, as a piece of art and the way it's designed, I like it. I'm not just convinced its the best cover to portray what's in the pages. :)
Next up: Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews