The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

The Adoration of Jenna Fox 
by Mary E. Pearson

 

You wake up in the morning and brush your teeth; when you see your face in the mirror shouldn't it look familiar?

You have loving parents, who can't seem to do enough for you; shouldn't you feel something for them?

Don't grandmothers usually love their grandchildren? Why would yours seem to hate you?

Isn't it supposed to be easier to remember your best friends, and what you did together, than to remember your first birthday--perfectly--or to recite an entire book by Thoreau?

And even if you have just recovered from an accident, and being in a coma, after three or for weeks shouldn't you be allowed to eat real food, not just some kind of weird liquid medical muck?

Jenna Fox was in a terrible car accident. She nearly died. She was in a coma for months. The reconstructive surgery required would have been impossible for anyone but the daughter of the scientist who runs the world's top medical research company. What it took to save Jenna was the latest in cutting edge tbio-echnology. But as Jenna Fox begins to recover in a strange house across the country from where she used to live, she begins to wonder just what secrets her family is hiding from her. She begins to wonder who--and what--she really is. And if, perhaps, it might not have been better if her father had let her die.
(booktalk by Kirsten Edwards, King County Library System)

The Adoration of Jenna Fox
 by Mary E. Pearson


Her parents never talk with her about the accident. It happened when she was sixteen. Now she is seventeen. She slept for over a year and now is recuperating at a secluded cottage in California. Her mother pores over the details of her before-the-accident life. But nothing seems to click. It is clear her parents love her very much, that they would do anything for her. But she remembers nothing. She feels nothing. Who is Jenna Fox she asks herself? Who am I?

Then she has her first memory, a flash of falling off a pier and of being saved by my grandmother as a little girl. But strangely her grandmother now seems to dislike her. Why would she resent Jenna being alive? After being in a coma for over a year the girl desperately wants a real life with friends and a future. And the more she remembers the more questions she has. Why can she remember so few personal details about her past live? Why did they move to California when her doctors are in Boston? Why is she forbidden to travel and return to school?

In a world changed, not always for the better, by the advance of biotechnology, maybe it is better not to ask too many questions. Because the answers might challenge your idea of what it means to be human.

Her parents love Jenna Fox. They would do anything to keep her alive. But what are they hiding?  

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

(booktalk by Tom Reynolds, librarian & author)