The Testament of Jessie Lamb

Jane Rogers, 2011

(March 2012)

So after harping on about the misogyny in the last book I read, this one opens with a teenage girl being kept prisoner in a spare room, with bicycle locks around her ankles and only a bucket to piss in. Plus ça change.

  

Except of course this really is a change, despite having several things which do stay the same. This is how you write about the intersection of scientific responsibility and gender relations. Having characters who actually seem to make their own choices is a good start, instead of cardboard cut-outs who only appear to act because that’s what the author wants. They don’t necessarily have to be nice characters, or make choices you agree with, but they should provoke more reaction than a shrug of disbelief.

Trouble is, I’m getting a little too old for bildungsroman (French and German. Quite the polyglot, aren’t I)? I’m not sure I was ever the right age. I was never really much of a rebel; too much of an introvert. Kicking against authority for the sake of it just seemed like so much effort. I read Catcher in the Rye in my mid-twenties and for all that it’s clearly a very good book, I spent most of it wanting to smack the self-obsessed little punk upside the head, then maybe yell at him to get off my lawn. At the time I lived in a fourth-floor flat.

And I like teenagers. I really do. Not like that – get your mind out of the gutter – but I work with them every day and while it can sometimes be a bit of a grind it can also be a joy. I guess it’s because at work I’ve got licence to steer them where I think they ought to be heading, but in a book all you can do is get hacked off with the tunnel vision and misplaced sense of certainty. Eventually you rein it in and remember that, early on at least, these characters are meant to be like that. No point coming of age if you aren’t actually coming from anywhere.

See? A book – a story – should be a journey, not just a sequence of things that happen. If the characters don’t change then there’s been no journey, no matter how clever or spectacular the set-pieces or philosophies might be.

Not that there's anything in the way of explosive set-pieces here. This is very much in the British tradition of cosy catastrophe, and therein lies the rub. I can suspend my disbelief regarding a global species-ending virus, but the protagonist is 16 years old and this is set in the UK. She wouldn't be old enough to drive, let alone take the kind of decision which drives this book; certainly not without her parents' consent. This has the unfortunate effect of rendering the main themes of growing up and making decisions rather moot. Plus, calling your narrator ‘lamb’ is telegraphing it bit much.