Jane RogersRecensioni

A book of two parts, interwoven. One is a traditionally written historical novel set in the late 1700s which is a third person viewpoint of a man, William Dawes, who is apparently an actual historical person. He served in the Royal Marines and was employed as a surveyor and overseer of convicts working in a British colony in Australia which eventually became the city of Sydney, but his real passion was astronomy. He is dissatisfied with his position, forced to obey orders of the capricious governor who presides over the gradual extermination of the native population of the area by a combination of smallpox - which William is unable to prove was deliberately spread among them and to which the Europeans were immune thanks to immunisation - and the destruction of habitat and overfishing, which wiped out their foodsupply. Any attempt he makes to stand out against these orders on the basis of conscience is condemned even by the clergyman as being due to the sin of pride: of thinking himself better than anyone else. He is tormented by guilt over sexuality, as he is attracted to one of the women convicts, and troubled by friendship with another marine who he discovers is homosexual which in those days would be a hanging offence.

The other part of the story is made up of the interwoven first person narratives of a woman called Olla who originates from somewhere in eastern Europe in the (present day at the time of publication) 1980s and the man she has married, Stephen. They have a total disassociation of viewpoints. Olla has known a lot of hardship, including an abusive home with a drunken father and a brother with breathing problems who she had to try to protect. Stephen is from a privileged middle class background but has become what was known at the time as a 'lefty' with Marxist views etc, which eventually lead him to disaster when he and another man try to run a school along egalitarian lines. The marriage undergoes total breakdown when they have a son who to everyone else is disabled but who Olla believes is a latent genius and messiah.

The historical part of the book was interesting but the 'present day' narrative didn't appeal and seemed a bit too self-consciously literary and a way of avoiding writing a true historical, which at the time of publication was a genre mostly out of favour and only rehabilitated by combining it with mysteries as in the Cadfael novels. The author wrote a much better true historical novel, 'Mr Wroe's Virgins', so I had expected better and really can only award this a 2 star 'OK' rating and that on the basis of the 18th century component.

Very British, minimally post apocalyptic story about a sort of daft girl who thinks she can help save the world. I disliked the ending, due to my personal beliefs about pregnancy and children. I read this mostly from curiosity, since it got lots of good reviews.

The narrator often annoyed me. I realize that’s because she rang mostly true, and I just don’t like her. Maybe I ended up respecting her by the end.

The SF premise is interesting and watching it play out kept me going.

I'm a little surprised at the accolades that this book has received; I found it in the new book section of my public library, and thought it was misfiled YA apocalyptic fiction. I was interested to read at the beginning of the story that the disease which was attacking the population was a modification of Creutzfield-Jakob, which is part of the family of prion diseases that have fascinated me for a long time, but there was not much further discussion about it, since Jessie did not have much firsthand contact with anyone with the disease. Overall, I though the book was styled much more like a young adult novel than an adult science fiction novel. Perhaps the faulty genre is why I felt it rated lower than it might have otherwise.

10. [23946298::Body Tourists] by [[Jane Rogers]]
published: 2019
format: 229-page hardcover
acquired: January, from avaland
read: Feb 7-13
time reading: 6 hr 33 min, 1.7 min/page
rating: 2½
locations: England, Scotland and some tropical island
about the author born in London, July 21, 1952

This is actually another follow-up on [Frankissstein], as it also pokes into what we might do with all these cryogenically frozen heads. Not my typical book, but I caught up in the take - downloading deceased brains into hired young healthy bodies (set up so everything can go wrong). Imagine what it would be like in the new, healthy, borrowed body, not to mention how you might feel about someone else borrowing your body. The concept is interesting, and she looks at it from several angles. And, it has left me thinking about it.

As it's a plot driven book, this was well out of my comfort zone. The prose is plot practical, sleekly efficient at defining characters in just a few lines. It's not unique to this book, but it's something I don't read much, so I spent some time thinking about, and, honestly, fighting with it. Part of me feels this style is very modern-life like, in way a painted metal sign is–informative, clear, but without anything else to see. But, that is just me dwelling on was is a clean effort at what I think is a normal writing style.

Lois's (Avaland's) review caught my attention she sent me the copy. (Thanks! 🙂)

https://www.librarything.com/topic/315313#7074051½

It is 2045 and science has arrived at a place where it can take advantage of "new developments in digital memory transfer from cryogenically frozen subjects' (via a cloning technique) into host bodies. The first transfers were done using "synths," but there was much debate over the legal status of the creature. One talented scientist, Luke Butler, with private funding from an his ultra-rich aunt, embarks on secret transfers of the digital material from the old to the bodies of young, healthy volunteers. Paid £10,000, the volunteers lose two weeks of their conscious life, while the downloaded people get to live once again, but for only those two weeks (meant to be spent on a secluded, tropical island, which happens to be where the wealthy aunt lives).

If one starts to think about this basic idea, all manner of fascinating questions arise and Rogers takes that trip with us: how are the people involved chosen? what are the moral implications of the process? what is the role of money in the process? what about the mind/body connection? and so on. The people paying for their deceased relative to be downloaded do not get a say in whose body their loved one is downloaded to, which opens up interesting conundrums: an old white man is downloaded into a young black man’s body or a woman into a man’s body. Then we can swing around and take interesting look at the people who are requesting this service, many of whomhave unresolved issues with the dead person, and let’s just say that their hopes and expectations aren’t always gratified.

This is a deceptively easy book to read, and it’s short, just a little over two hundred pages, and Rogers does more showing than telling, leaving her questions open. Any one of these questions could be a book in themselves, and probably has been somewhere in science fiction history (and I’ve probably read some of them), but more than anything, this author, like most of us, has observed both benefits and detriments to our advancements, is reminding us it's about the people.

Not necessarily a great book, but I liked it quite a bit better than I expected to. Tonally, very reminiscent of Never Let Me Go (although I thought that was a better book). I don't expect to see it on the Booker shortlist, but I think it earned its place on the longlist. Recommended for fans of dystopian fiction. Especially if you liked The Handmaid's Tale.

This abridged audio was broken up into 10, 12-minute segments.

This story seemed to have a lot of drama just for drama's sake without a meaningful story. The premise was so unrealistic and the characters despicable. El (hate the whole "El" and "Con" thing) was a self-centered bitch, and Con a complete moron. This was tough to endure even as a passive listener.

Not necessarily a great book, but I liked it quite a bit better than I expected to. Tonally, very reminiscent of Never Let Me Go (although I thought that was a better book). I don't expect to see it on the Booker shortlist, but I think it earned its place on the longlist. Recommended for fans of dystopian fiction. Especially if you liked The Handmaid's Tale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At age 28, bitter but very funny Nikki Black decides to find her birth mother and kill her for the difficult childhood she left her to bear. Nikki does succeed in tracking down her mother, as well-as a slow-witted half-brother, Calum, on an island in Scotland. Renting a room in their home, she watches her mother's patterns, befriending Calum and pumping him for information. At first derisive of Calum's innocence and interests, she begins to appreciate him, all the while trying to decide if she should murder their mother or kill her more slowly by luring Calum off the island. Both her and Calum's emotions bring about a a crisis that is a complete shock but a wonderful ending for the reader. Gorgeous characterization, especially of the siblings, and an evocative exploration of many feelings, particularly those produced by abandonment and anxiety attacks. Just wonderful.½

I've been a fan of Jane Rogers since her novel Mr. Wroe's Virgins was published in the US back in 2000 (I think) and subsequently chased down her three previous books, and have tried to stay reasonably current with what she has written since then. You might remember her as the author of the more recent The Testament of Jessie Lamb, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Arthur C. Clarke award. I saw this collection being offered by the UK's Comma Press—a press I have bought several collections from—I, of course, had to have it.

This is a delicious collection of twenty, previously published short stories. It is a broad collection, and as Hilary Mantel says, Rogers has the skill to "inhabit many different voices and different worlds....Her observation of our species is tender, precise, illuminating." The very first story in the collection, "Red Enters the Eye," is one of the best in the collection, a tale of a talented textile artist, who moves to Nigeria to make a difference at a woman's refuge. And the last story in the collection, "Hitting Trees with Sticks" is a story of dementia from the viewpoint of the victim. There's a ghost story, a story of Tesla, and the creepy "Ped-o-matique." There's a sort of African folk tale, and a tale of one young man through the viewpoint of several people connected in some way to him...and many more stories, different settings, different voices, all told by very human narrators.

*if my comments seem a bit flat, it's because I read this earlier in the year and am only now just commenting on it.

From my blog


The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers is modern fiction with a apocalyptic premise; it is the tale of a teenage girl faced with a dying world and a great desire to do some now to help make sure there is a future, but her parents just aren’t ready to let her grow up.
First off, thank you so much to Ria at Bibliotropic for hosting the giveaway that landed me with this book. I had forgotten about it and it was an awesome surprise to find two books in my mailbox when I had only expected one :D. The Testament of Jessie Lamb wasn’t quite what I was expecting (I had thought there would be more apocalypse and less modern fiction elements) but it was still very enjoyable and probably good for me to get out of my normal genres a little! :D

Setting: In the (very) near future a bio-terrorist attack has infected the entire world. This disease, however, spares most people; it only destroys the brains of women when they become pregnant. A way of producing babies has been discovered, however while it spares the child, the mothers still never wake up from their comas.
Premise: Jessie Lamb is a 16 year old girl taking classes and crushing on a boy until women start dying. The world starts falling apart, and she does what any teenager mad at the world would do: she joins an activist group. That’s not the answer she’s looking for though, and as more research reveals hope for the future, she makes a decision that her parents don’t think she is ready to make yet.

Strengths:

I really like the format of The Testament of Jessie Lamb. It is written from two time perspectives: Jessie in the present, being held prisoner basically, and Jessie relating what happened that brought her to the decision she made.
Jessie’s character develops smoothly and wonderfully as the book progresses and I found myself being very convinced by her telling of her journey.
While you know where things are headed for most of the novel, I still cried at the end, which means it must have been moving :D.
I also really liked the premise, it seemed like an original twist on the world-wide pandemic idea. And as a hobby biologist, I was content with the explanation given for the disease’s behavior.

Weaknesses:

About half way through The Testament of Jessie Lamb I found myself not wanting to pick up the book. I think this was due to a combination of it being a little slow and rather depressing, but I got beyond that point pretty easily.
That being said, the ending is pretty much obviously depressing and very much not a happy fairy tale, be warned.
There were several times where the very authentic English dialects were so thick that I didn’t understand what the slang they were using meant. It was only a few words here and there, but a little bit more help for us Americans would have been nice, like maybe a glossary :D.

Summary:

As I said before, The Testament of Jessie Lamb was more modern fiction with a apocalyptic sci-fi premise than anything else. It was fairly peaceful pacing, and all of the tension was from Jessie needing to make decisions, not from any immediate external peril. The writing is compelling and easy to follow, so it was quite pleasant for me to read on the long plane rides I had, but I would be careful of where you read the ending unless you like crying in public :D.

Didn't P.D. James already cover this? Also, "just desserts." These are just sniggerings; there are plenty of ways to address the subject and Children of Men was interesting for how it skirted such a setting.

After finishing it, I can't say why this was long-listed for the Booker (which is not why I selected it; I think I did because of Goodreads or Facebook). It was okay but not as interesting as its subject could be, let alone arresting. ETA: a DPL staff member recommended it.

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 [b:Earth Abides|93269|Earth Abides|George R. Stewart|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320505234s/93269.jpg|1650913].) 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 of the story and had the conflict with friends or with society in general.

What I also really loved was the fact that as I put the book down for a breather, or in response to the outside world, I could still see a lingering image of the scene I had just finished. Rogers is not someone who deals in overblown description and her world is very much our own world with the one key difference, which all makes it easier to imagine, but regardless, that is a really good indicator of how deeply I was immersed in the reality of the story right from the beginning.

From my blog http://www.onstarshipsanddragonwings.com/

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers is modern fiction with a apocalyptic premise; it is the tale of a teenage girl faced with a dying world and a great desire to do some now to help make sure there is a future, but her parents just aren’t ready to let her grow up.
First off, thank you so much to Ria at Bibliotropic for hosting the giveaway that landed me with this book. I had forgotten about it and it was an awesome surprise to find two books in my mailbox when I had only expected one :D. The Testament of Jessie Lamb wasn’t quite what I was expecting (I had thought there would be more apocalypse and less modern fiction elements) but it was still very enjoyable and probably good for me to get out of my normal genres a little! :D

Goodreads
Title: The Testament of Jessie Lamb
Author: Jane Rogers
Pages: 240 (paperback)
Genre-ish: Modern Fiction/Apocalyptic sci-fi
Rating: ★★★★☆ - Moving plot and characters
Setting: In the (very) near future a bio-terrorist attack has infected the entire world. This disease, however, spares most people; it only destroys the brains of women when they become pregnant. A way of producing babies has been discovered, however while it spares the child, the mothers still never wake up from their comas.
Premise: Jessie Lamb is a 16 year old girl taking classes and crushing on a boy until women start dying. The world starts falling apart, and she does what any teenager mad at the world would do: she joins an activist group. That’s not the answer she’s looking for though, and as more research reveals hope for the future, she makes a decision that her parents don’t think she is ready to make yet.
Strengths:

I really like the format of The Testament of Jessie Lamb. It is written from two time perspectives: Jessie in the present, being held prisoner basically, and Jessie relating what happened that brought her to the decision she made.
Jessie’s character develops smoothly and wonderfully as the book progresses and I found myself being very convinced by her telling of her journey.
While you know where things are headed for most of the novel, I still cried at the end, which means it must have been moving :D.
I also really liked the premise, it seemed like an original twist on the world-wide pandemic idea. And as a hobby biologist, I was content with the explanation given for the disease’s behavior.
Weaknesses:

About half way through The Testament of Jessie Lamb I found myself not wanting to pick up the book. I think this was due to a combination of it being a little slow and rather depressing, but I got beyond that point pretty easily.
That being said, the ending is pretty much obviously depressing and very much not a happy fairy tale, be warned.
There were several times where the very authentic English dialects were so thick that I didn’t understand what the slang they were using meant. It was only a few words here and there, but a little bit more help for us Americans would have been nice, like maybe a glossary :D.
Summary:

As I said before, The Testament of Jessie Lamb was more modern fiction with a apocalyptic sci-fi premise than anything else. It was fairly peaceful pacing, and all of the tension was from Jessie needing to make decisions, not from any immediate external peril. The writing is compelling and easy to follow, so it was quite pleasant for me to read on the long plane rides I had, but I would be careful of where you read the ending unless you like crying in public :D.

Originally reviewed on A Reader of Fictions.

Looking at this pretty, stark cover, with its brags of the Man Booker Prize (even the long list is impressive), I could not help but look forward to reading this. I expected something extraordinary, something literary, something as well-written as Stormdancer. What I got was nothing like that. The Testament of Jesse Lamb has a marvelous concept, but the execution of the novel just left so much to be desired, like knowledge of proper grammar.

Before I get all ranty, which believe me I will, I want to discuss the positive things. As I mentioned, the concept really does hold a lot of appeal to me. In this vision of the future, some terrorist, for reasons unknown, created a virus that affects pregnant women. Every pregnancy equals death. No cure has been devised and humanity has only so long until the youngest remaining women become to old to bear children, assuming a cure ever is created.

Jessie Lamb lives in Britain. When the virus, MDS - Maternal Death Syndrome, hits, she becomes an activist, arguing for children to be given legal independence younger, since obviously adults cannot be counted on to protect their best interests. Basically, YOFI claims that the older generations screwed up the world, so they should really stop pretending to be all wise. Through this group, Jessie searches for meaning in this new world that could end with her generation.

Like Jessie, everyone searches for meaning. Scientists desperately consider cures, ways to develop antidotes or to produce disease-free babies from frozen eggs and sperm. Militant women's rights groups form to protect women against this new harsher climate, where rapes and abuse have become more common. Homosexuality, too, has become much more common and more accepted, which seems one of the only good things to come of all of this. Some people distract themselves from mankind's likely end by focusing on fighting for the rights of all of the other animals, pissed off that humanity's last act will be murdering other creatures in an effort to stay alive ourselves. Of course, the end of the world would not be complete without creepy cults, and those are there too: the Noahs.

Most pertinent to the story, though, are the Sleeping Beauties, the teenage girls that sacrifice their lives to bring a new life into the world. It is, actually, still possible for new babies to be born, though they too have the disease. However, the only way for this to happen is to put the mother into a coma and keep her alive with machines while the virus destroys her brain. After the baby is born, cut from her stomach, she is unplugged. These girls have no chance of surviving; no pregnant women do. Pregnancy has a one hundred percent mortality rate.

All of that is just fantastic. On top of that, the book starts with a bang. Jessie is being held captive for some reason, and is being forced to write out her testament. This technique, while a bit hackneyed, was effective, because I did want to know who had captured her and why he was keeping her in the basement tied up in bicycle chains.

From what I can tell, neither Rogers nor her editor (assuming there was one) have the slightest clue how punctuation works. Throughout the book, it seems as if different punctuation marks were inserted almost at random into sentences. I had so many flashbacks to high school English teachers lecturing the class about how awful comma splices are and how you should never ever use one in a paper or they would automatically deduct ten points. Rogers would have negative points. She uses comma splices like they are about to go out of style; the bad news for her is that they already were out of style, so this is in exceedingly bad taste.

EXAMPLE: "I thought of the drugs trial volunteers, they were nearly all men."

When connecting two separate but related sentences, one should use a semicolon NOT a comma. FACT. This happens innumerable times. Of course, she balances that out by also sometimes using semicolons incorrectly: "Then we walked back to my house holding hands and not talking, feeling as if we owned the night and everything in it; moon, stars, the dark shapes of trees, the crouching quiet houses." This proves that she DOES know what semicolons are, but not that she knows how to use them. To be fair, she does very occasionally use them as they are meant to be used. What I find even more frustrating about this is that if she had just accepted she didn't know how to connect the sentences and had two complete sentences, she would have been just fine.

Another big problem she had grammatically stemmed from her desire, I guess, to make the tone sound like a teenager. A very popular way for writers to do this is sentence fragments. Here's her punctuation-challenged version: "There was a longish silence then she asked about my parents. Which was a relief; rattling off their sorry story was easy and I hope made me sound more sensible and objective." Lovely, right? This both misuses a semi-colon and is entirely unnecessary. Tack the 'which was a relief' onto the end of the prior sentence with a comma and you have perfectly correct writing. No editor should let this pass. There are way more issues, but I will stop here in the grammatical portion of the review.

Since reading closely made me want to weep or claw my eyes out or go visit my high school English teachers and get them to commiserate with me, I ended up basically skimming most of this book. On the plus side, this did make it go faster, which is good since I was also somewhat bored. The characters just did not interest me that much. I tried to care, but Jessie is a bit distant from other people and I couldn't support most of her decisions at all.

I did try to care about the romance. The scene where the characters admit their feelings was kind of adorable and then they realize she has built in birth control (all the girls do for obvious reasons), so they might as well have sex now. It's going great until the hymen-breaking puts a damper on things. They stop momentarily and then this description happens:

"He began to kiss me again. And to move as slowly and gently as a little pink earthworm when you pick it up from the garden in the palm of your hand."

What the fuck did I just read? No matter how many times I read that, I am never any less grossed out. This is one of the least sexy things that could ever be put in the midst of a sex scene. AND WHY? There's no reason for this to happen. NONE.

This review has rambled on and on, so I should probably draw to some sort of close. The Man Booker people loved it; I did not. (Or, in her speak: The Man Booker people loved it, I did not.) With such distracting and flagrant errors, I simply cannot countenance giving this book a rating above 2, though the content would be a 2.5 or 3. Do what you will with that information. I'm off to watch Pretty Little Liars and read Blood Red Road to cleanse my soul.½

I've read books before where the main character doesn't want to live (This is Not a Test comes to mind), but I understood the reasonings before. In Jessie's case she wants to sacrifice herself for humanity, but how she came around to this decision just doesn't make sense to me.

I was very interested in the world-ending virus that crops up, but less interested in the main character. So this goes right up there with the other adult speculative fiction that I haven't loved this year.½

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.

Jessie Lamb is sixteen and the world is in crisis. Somehow a virus that kills every pregnant woman has been unleashed into the world. Everyone alive is a carrier but it only becomes lethal when a woman becomes pregnant. Jessie's father works in an IVF clinic and they have found a way to keep pregnant women alive long enough for them to give birth. These women are called Sleeping Beauties because they are put into a medically induced coma. Of course, that child has the virus (called Maternal Death Syndrome or MDS) so the same problem arises. Then the clinic realizes that they have frozen embryoes from before MDS existed. If they can find surrogate mothers that will carry the embryoes then those babies would be free of MDS. (I'm not sure why these babies wouldn't acquire the MDS virus as they grow up. This is the one area that confused me and I don't think the book made it clear.) If enough of these babies grow up and have children of their own then eventually there would be a MDS free population. Sixteen year old girls make the best surrogate mothers because they are able to have full-term, healthy babies apparently. The older the mother is the worse the chances for the child. Jessie decides that she will volunteer to be a surrogate mother even though it means her own death.

I thought the book did a good job of portraying what would happen to society if some cataclysmic event occurred. Women are pitted against men, scientists against non-scientists, religious people against atheists and so on. There was also a good storyline involving Jessie and her parents. Her father thinks the surrogate motherhood idea is a good one as long as it doesn't involve his daughter. I could really feel the anguish the parents felt and, to tell the truth, I sided with them. The author also did a good job of portraying Jessie's thoughts and actions. As I said before, the big problem I had with this book was believing the surrogate children would be the solution and since that's the crux of the book it is a major flaw.½

More reviews at: http://www.onstarshipsanddragonwings.com/2012/07/17/testament-of-jessie-lamb/

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers is modern fiction with a apocalyptic premise; it is the tale of a teenage girl faced with a dying world and a great desire to do some now to help make sure there is a future, but her parents just aren’t ready to let her grow up.
First off, thank you so much to Ria at Bibliotropic for hosting the giveaway that landed me with this book. I had forgotten about it and it was an awesome surprise to find two books in my mailbox when I had only expected one :D. The Testament of Jessie Lamb wasn’t quite what I was expecting (I had thought there would be more apocalypse and less modern fiction elements) but it was still very enjoyable and probably good for me to get out of my normal genres a little! :D

Title: The Testament of Jessie Lamb
Author: Jane Rogers
Pages: 240 (paperback)
Genre-ish: Modern Fiction/Apocalyptic sci-fi
Rating: ★★★★☆ - Moving plot and characters
Setting: In the (very) near future a bio-terrorist attack has infected the entire world. This disease, however, spares most people; it only destroys the brains of women when they become pregnant. A way of producing babies has been discovered, however while it spares the child, the mothers still never wake up from their comas.
Premise: Jessie Lamb is a 16 year old girl taking classes and crushing on a boy until women start dying. The world starts falling apart, and she does what any teenager mad at the world would do: she joins an activist group. That’s not the answer she’s looking for though, and as more research reveals hope for the future, she makes a decision that her parents don’t think she is ready to make yet.
Strengths:

I really like the format of The Testament of Jessie Lamb. It is written from two time perspectives: Jessie in the present, being held prisoner basically, and Jessie relating what happened that brought her to the decision she made.
Jessie’s character develops smoothly and wonderfully as the book progresses and I found myself being very convinced by her telling of her journey.
While you know where things are headed for most of the novel, I still cried at the end, which means it must have been moving :D.
I also really liked the premise, it seemed like an original twist on the world-wide pandemic idea. And as a hobby biologist, I was content with the explanation given for the disease’s behavior.
Weaknesses:

About half way through The Testament of Jessie Lamb I found myself not wanting to pick up the book. I think this was due to a combination of it being a little slow and rather depressing, but I got beyond that point pretty easily.
That being said, the ending is pretty much obviously depressing and very much not a happy fairy tale, be warned.
There were several times where the very authentic English dialects were so thick that I didn’t understand what the slang they were using meant. It was only a few words here and there, but a little bit more help for us Americans would have been nice, like maybe a glossary :D.
Summary:

As I said before, The Testament of Jessie Lamb was more modern fiction with a apocalyptic sci-fi premise than anything else. It was fairly peaceful pacing, and all of the tension was from Jessie needing to make decisions, not from any immediate external peril. The writing is compelling and easy to follow, so it was quite pleasant for me to read on the long plane rides I had, but I would be careful of where you read the ending unless you like crying in public :D.

My main reaction to this book is a case of "I wish": I wish that I had liked this more. I wish that the characterization had been stronger, more developed so I cared about Jessie's final decision. I wish more had been provided about the initial act of biological terrorism that sets the book into motion and leaves humanity 80-odd years from extinction. As it is, even with my dismay over some of the core elements (main character's unlikeability, the secondary, wholly superfluous plotline revolving around the parentals marriage) to be found in this quick-moving and quick-reading novel, this is a fresh approach to a world-ending apocalypse -- it just isn't carried through the full potential. Jane Rogers certainly succeeds at creating a truly freaky end of the world scenario, and in getting her readers to think about what they would do in just such a dire situation - I just wasn't all that invested in what her invented characters did here.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb certainly starts out well - and with a bang at that. With a concept that sounds like a vague mashup of The Handmaid's Tale (emphasis on feminine importance for their wombs) and Never Let Me Go (organ donation and the outcome from it), I was good to go. With the benefit of one of the more intriguing cold opens I've read so far this year, my interest was piqued from even before chapter one officially started. The idea of MDS ("Maternal Death Syndrome") and its dramatic, mortal effects is a nice, very creative spin on already-popular apocalypse genre, and Rogers' plot allows for intricate and divisive morality maneuvering between people and parties. Unfortunately, this is more of a character-driven novel and I found Jessie's first-person narration to be off-putting so my interest slowly waned as it became more and more concerned with solely her evolutionary arc. (Also, Lamb? Obvious name is obvious. First name is totally cool, though.) The novel is Jessie's epistolary to the unknown future and as a narrative structure, it works well for her voice, story and reveals, if it's not an entirely unique approach.

Probably 65% of my dislike can be laid solely at the feet of our main character, Jessie. From the outset, she's a remote and somewhat cold narrator, a fact that is only reinforced by her nature towards her parents. She's obviously a complicated girl - that one so isolated would be so incredibly giving? naive? suicidal? speaks volumes of her development. I just couldn't identify with her personality-free narrative. Instead of allying with the closer-in-age main character, it's Jessie's poor, hapless parents that evoke the most sympathy. Jessie's stubborn and seemingly-willful naivety comes off as completely uncaring and apathetic to her understandably distressed parents. I don't expect Jessie to capitulate (hell, that would kill any plot in the book), but she could be infinitely more compassionate to her parents concerns and much more obligatory and explicit about her reasons for why she wants to be a Sleeping Beauty.

I felt like a lot of the struggle between factions (the scientists vs the environmentals vs the 'Noahs') to be way too heavy-handed. Each side of the tripod is too extreme in their approach so none are really believable, even in this setting. The Testament of Jessie Lamb is a book that can be alternatively thoughtful or frustrating as interesting aspects of the book can be shortchanged for less original and compelling ideas, like the parents. I did like the open-ended nature of the finale as regards to Jessie's personal storyline but felt slightly shortchanged elsewhere. There's not a lot of payoff to finishing this novel - as a reader you're supposed to reflect and make your own decisions about the life and decisions made, but blehhh. In the end, instead of inspiring me to question the M.O. behind all the opposing parties, I just felt that the ideas behind The Testament of Jessie Lamb weren't as fully explored as they could have been.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is an introspective thinker of a novel and I think reactions will be divided across the board. Some readers will love Rogers's slow and female-targeted approach to the end of humanity and strong if distant main character and others will pick it apart for the misused, cookie-cutter cast, the unnecessary subplots and the lack of answers. To each their own. I can't say that I was entirely happy with this when I finished it, but nor was I filled with rage. I'll more than likely keep an eye out for what else this author will put out in the future without committing myself.

An interesting premise, but after 100 pages, it didn't feel like the story had advanced much. Time to move on to another TBR book...

Jessie Lamb lives in the Manchester of today. On the face of it a fairly normal teenage girl living a fairly regular middle class existence with her loving parents. however, as can only be the case and the only vague saving grace of the novel…things aren’t as they might seem at first glance. The human race is hurtling towards extinction; the victim of an uncompromising virus called MDS, otherwise known as Maternal Death Syndrome (yes, it is as depressing as it sounds); an inescapable, fatal disease that attacks all pregnant women on earth, rendering useless our ability to procreate.
As we see the world through Jessie’s eyes, it seems that the bio-terrorists have achieved their goal. Ordinary life is rapidly disintegrating. Faced with oblivion, the most extreme sides of the human character begin to materialise. Gangs of aggressive men roam the streets, feminists battling programs that deliberately impregnate (and therefore kill) women to find a cure come head to head with animal rights groups. Rogers even throws in a few religious fundamentalists for good measure…lucky us.

Before I launch into why I resented having to read this gubbins so much (even dramatically throwing it across the living room at one point, much to the boyfriend’s dismay) I’d like to try and commit to the tinterweb the reasons why we all felt this book has inadvertently become that of the award-winning variety. What Jane Rogers’ does betray here is a head full of really interesting ideas. Ideas that, even if you hate the book, do remain with you for a few days after putting this down. For the most fearful among us, the concept of the human race being subject to bio-terrorism on this scale does seem to lie within the realm of possibility. We do have to die out at some point after all, however depressing that thought may be. Exploring how this might happen is a genius idea for a novel and setting the story in bog-standard English environs should help to reinforce the entire ‘could happen to us’ intention of the whole book.

Trouble is, none of that is any good if it’s badly executed. Although some members of the group had read and enjoyed Rogers’ work in the past, all agreed that Jessie sadly proved to be both an irritating and largely unconvincing narrator. Clunking along, I felt that the book became less concerned about the fate of the entire world and more centered on teenage procrastination. Wanting to sacrifice herself to the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ program which, although killing her, will produce a none-MDS baby and thus give the world a glimmer of hope for the future, I should have been sold. Needless to say I wasn’t. Feeling her motives for self-sacrifice were selfish, senseless and ill thought-out I found myself on the side of Jessie’s parents, particularly her father who goes as far as to imprison her, steering her away from suicide. How, after all, does a girl of sixteen arrive at such an extreme conclusion? A lot of time staring out of the window looking at the trees it seems……*yawn*

I did try to take a step back from my frustration, tried not to let the allusion to The Handmaid’s Tale made by some noggin on the back annoy me too much – to no avail. Is this supposed to be young adult fiction? Are the references to my hometown just making the whole story a little too close to home? Or am I just not a dystopian kind of girl? (with my lacklustre response to Never Let Me Go it could seem that way..)

I think not. This is miserable tosh. I’m afraid I don’t believe in your world Miss Rogers, nor your heroine…especially not when they live right on my dystopian doorstep…..

http://relishreads.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/the-testament-of-jessie-lamb/