The Testament of Jessie Lamb (34 page)

BOOK: The Testament of Jessie Lamb

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That was the earliest starting point; Kazuo Ishiguro's
Never Let Me Go
was also very influential, both in his notion of setting a story a little outside of our own time, and in his exploration of ideas of sacrifice/self-sacrifice and attitudes to death. Once I had decided upon a teenage protagonist, I read a lot of first-person teen voices, and the one that was most helpful and influential was
The Diary of Anne Frank
ï»¿âI wanted to try to capture exactly the same sense of a world in crisis, of impending tragedy, but also of irrepressible youth and optimism, and joyful interest in detail.

John Wyndham's
The Chrysalids
, with its vision of a group of youngsters pitted against the adult world, and a strong and likable first-person voice, was also important to me.

Finally, I guess each novel I have written is partly in reaction to the previous one: in
Island
I worked with the first-person voice of a strong but damaged (some would say deranged) young woman, and in
The Voyage Home
the female protagonist is a passive victim: I wanted Jessie to have the courage and idealism these women lacked.