The Testament of Jessie Lamb (33 page)

—Kathryn Harrison,
New York Times Book Review

“A historical novel in the tradition of A. S. Byatt … humorous, touching, ironic … explores the time-honored conflict between the sacred and the profane.”

—
Pacific Sun

“
Mr. Wroe's Virgins
is an original, interesting meditation on religion, lust, love, and transcendence.”

—
Washington Post

“Gracefully written and immensely powerful, this imaginative reconstruction of what nine months with a peculiar patriarch might have been like is also an insightful exploration of the interplay between faith, passion, and betrayal.”

—
Booklist

A
LSO BY
J
ANE
R
OGERS

The Voyage Home

Island

Promised Lands

Mr. Wroe's Virgins

The Ice is Singing

Her Living Image

Separate Tracks

Cover design by Amanda Kain

Cover photograph © Clayton Bastiani/Trevillion

Trevillion Images

HARPER
PERENNIAL

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Sandstone Press Ltd.

P.S.
^TM
is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

THE TESTAMENT OF JESSIE LAMB
. Copyright © 2012 by Jane Rogers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST U.S. EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-213080-8

EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN 9780062130815

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About the author

Meet Jane Rogers

About the book

The story behind
The Testament of Jessie Lamb

Read on

Books that inspired me, or which fed into the writing of
The Testament of Jessie Lamb

J
ANE
R
OGERS HAS PUBLISHED
eight novels, written original television and radio dramas, and adapted work (her own and others') for radio and TV. Her novels include
Mr. Wroe's Virgins, Island
, and
The Voyage Home
. She also writes short stories and was short-listed in the BBC National Short Story Award 2009. She has been awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, the Writers' Guild Best Fiction Book award, and an Arts Council Award; she was also nominated by the BAFTA for best drama serial and was a runner-up for the Guardian Fiction Prize. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
The Testament of Jessie Lamb
was long-listed for the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

Her work as an editor includes anthologies of new writing and a reference guide to fiction. She has taught writing to a wide range of students, and is a professor of writing on the MA course at Sheffield Hallam University and a mentor for Gold Dust, a mentoring organization for aspiring novelists.

Jane lives near Manchester and is currently working on a collection of stories.

Originally published on www.theman bookerprize.com. Interview conducted by Sophie Rochester
.

Q:
Congratulations on being long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Can you tell us a bit about where you were when you heard the news and how you reacted?

A:
I'd been gardening, with my mobile out of earshot, and didn't look at it until I was out in the street. Six messages and five missed calls! When my agent's assistant told me I was on the long list I asked her how long the list was, and understood her to reply “Thirty.” It was only after some excitement at her end that I realized she was saying “Thirteen,” at which point I had to sit down.

Q: The Testament of Jessie Lamb
is set in the (near) future—how did you envisage this world altered by an act of biological terrorism?

A:
I read quite a few future-scenario factual books, looking at potential areas of threat and disaster. I wanted something which would very specifically create a role for young women; I wanted a young female who could be heroic. I come from a family of scientists, and have two siblings in particular who specialize in women's reproductive health and ethics, so I was able to run my ideas past them repeatedly, and my brother provided me with a scientifically plausible potential biological threat. I should credit him with the genesis of the MDS virus, which would actually work in the way I describe, but I must confess I have simplified the science somewhat, in the interests of making the book readable!

Q:
The futuristic world created in
The Testament of Jessie Lamb
covers some very contemporary issues, such as genetic research and antivivisection. Did you want to explore the complexities of these debates within your novel?

A:
No, that was not my purpose in writing the book. I was interested in exploring the relationship between a teenage girl at the point of independence, and her protective parents. The relationship mirrors that between Iphigenia and her parents in Euripides' play: I chose to set it in the future because I wanted the girl's decision to take up a heroic role, to be something the reader would not feel she/he already had an opinion about.

Originally, I had thought of making Jessie a suicide bomber, in order to explore her parents' responses and the way the balance of power changed in that relationship. But I decided that readers might be sidetracked by the politics, and might judge Jessie's behavior as right or wrong depending on whether they agreed with her cause. By setting the novel in the future, I could avoid readers prejudging her, and hopefully avoid issues of “right” and “wrong.”

Once I started to think about the way young people might respond to a biological disaster, it seemed to me to chime in very much with the way many people feel about the world now, that is to say, that a wholesale rejection of our previous exploitative way of living on this planet is necessary. The introduction of the young people's attitudes to genetic research and vivisection is part of this rejection of the older generation's world.

Q:
In the lead-up to the long-list announcement there was a lot of debate on Twitter from sci-fi fans saying they wished the genre was better represented on the Man Booker Prize long lists. Would you see your novel as fitting into the category?

A:
It is mainstream fiction, I hope, but I would be proud to have it described as science fiction in the mold of 1960s New Wave sci-fi, with its interest in inner space as opposed to outer space. I also love earlier dystopias like
Brave New World
, and am a passionate fan of John Wyndham. I'll be adapting his
The Chrysalids
for radio later this year. I would be very pleased if anyone thought of
Jessie Lamb
in a bracket with his work. Would you define Atwood's
Oryx and Crake
as sci-fi? Or Kazuo Ishiguro's brilliant
Never Let Me Go
?. You can argue about labels for books, and I guess this one will appeal to some sci-fi fans and not to others. But I do believe that the future, or alternative worlds, are great arenas for exploring big ideas and putting characters through testing experiences.

Q:
You're a prolific writer
—
novels, television and radio dramas, adaptations. Is there a writing discipline that comes most naturally to you? Do you approach each type of writing project with a different hat on?

A:
I love writing prose above all. I see myself primarily as a novelist, although I have become passionate about the short story over the past couple of years. I like writing for radio because it has the intimacy of a novel, and the interior voice works so well in the medium.

Q: The Testament of Jessie Lamb
feels like it would transfer easily to the big screen. Has the novel been optioned already for film?

A:
No, it has not yet been optioned for film, although several companies have expressed interest. I'd love to see it as a film.

O
NE OF THE STARTING POINTS
was Philip Roth's great novel
American Pastoral
. I was fascinated by the close relationship between the Swede and his daughter, Merry, and by her shift into a world he can't comprehend—by her act of terrorism, and her rejection of all that her parents value. Roth focuses on the Swede's point of view; I was interested in Merry's story—in the idea of telling a story of rebellion and rejection from the point of view of the daughter.