If you want to wipe out a species,targeting the females is a good place to start. James Tiptree Jr.s 1977 short story The Screwfly Solution has a mysterious epidemic spread across the earth that causes men to murder women. At the end of the story we learn what caused this,but its too late; the human race is doomed. In Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb the cause behind the spread of MDS is never discovered. What matter,however,are the results of this disease; MDS or Maternal Death Syndrome now affects everyone on the planet,and every woman who gets pregnant will die. Jessie,Rogers narrator,is a teenaged girl. Over the course of a few months she moves from indifference towards MDS,through an involvement with various political groups,to a willingness to take radical steps to save the human race. Her testament is told from captivity (the identity of her captor,hidden at first,comes as an unpleasant shock); her account of the events that led up to this moment is interspersed with reflections on her prison. How do you wait for the world to end? From the beginning of The Testament of Jessie Lamb its clear that unless something miraculous happens,the human race is going to die out within a couple of generations. And (as Jessie thinks in the context of MDS) the knowing it was coming must be the worst part. Rogers documents various reactions to this knowing; Jessies mother tries to get on with life as usual,her aunt joins a religious cult,her friends join various feminist and environmentalist groups. Young people,angry with the mismanagement of the world by grown-ups (the awkwardly petulant teenagers are Rogers biggest weakness) form a separatist movement. The best solution that science can come up with is to sacrifice young women (Sleeping Beauties) implanting them with embryos on the understanding that the women will die. The religious groups think this is wonderful; the feminists think its barbaric and Jessie is tempted by the prospect of saving the species. At this point it becomes clear why the book is prefaced with a quote from Euripedes Iphegenia at Aulis. Jessies name also begins to seem ominous the similarity to Jesus might be a coincidence,but Jesus is also the lamb of God. Late in the book,Jessies father describes a Sleeping Beauty as a lamb to the slaughter. But in a plot as apocalyptic as the end of humanity,its unsurprising that there should be explicit religious overtones. And so Jessies story is a testament,and the farm where she takes refuge is Eden. At first Jessies narrative is rather underwhelming. But as the reader approaches the later stages of the book it becomes clear that this is a brilliantly crafted piece of work Jessies frustration at the adults around her,her conviction of her own rightness and her attraction towards martyrdom all ring true. Id like to think its a rare reader who will agree with Jessies choice or the reasoning behind it. Yet we see every step of the road to that decision. The result is a deeply uncomfortable piece of writing. The last few years have seen plenty of dystopian novels featuring teenaged protagonists (and I do wonder how this book would have been received had it been published as young-adult literature). But reading The Testament of Jessie Lamb,its easy to see how this science fiction novel published by a small press should have made it to this years Booker long-list. It is outstanding.
