Who is Jenna Fox? Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago. But what happened before that? Jenna doesn’t remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?

This fascinating novel represents a stunning new direction for acclaimed author Mary Pearson. Set in a near future America, it takes readers on an unforgettable journey through questions of bio-medical ethics and the nature of humanity. Mary Pearson’s vividly drawn characters and masterful writing soar to a new level of sophistication

-cover and description courtesy of Goodreads.

This is a repost of my review of The Adoration of Jenna Fox, originally written in early 2011. On Friday we’ll be reviewing its sequel, The Fox Inheritance. We’re also giving away an audio book edition of The Fox Inheritance to one US reader! To enter, just comments on this post by 11.59 PM EST on Thursday 9 February. The winner will be announced on Friday.

Atmospheric Analysis: I love this cover. It’s attractive, mysterious without being mysteeeerious and looks appropriately literary given the book’s tone. The butterfly thing is also related to the plot, albeit in a slightly oblique way.

I like the cover so much, in fact, that I’m genuinely annoyed over the new, crappy cover for the rerelease.

Planetary Class: Near-future social SF. The technology involved in Jenna’s healing/resurrection exists as justification; the real speculative side of this book, the one you’re supposed to think about, is its depiction of a super virus-ridden society where regenerative medicine is doled out according to a person’s needs.

Mohs Rating: Jenna Fox hinges on One Big Lie. Substitute the interesting-but-probably-impossible technology with something like organ cloning and you’d be dealing with a straight-up speculative science story. (Although doing so would wreck the novel’s themes, which is probably why it doesn’t use more realistic science in the first place.)

Viability Rating: It’s pretty damn viable. As I said above, the technology might be shaky, but the way Jenna’s society reacts to it certainly isn’t.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: This is one of those books that contradicts the notion that YA fiction needs to sound ‘authentic’. I would defy you to find any teenager quite as articulate and downright literary in their thinking as Jenna Fox; you’d probably have a pretty tough time. The book still works, though, because while Jenna’s thoughts aren’t particularly realistic in their presentation, they are absolutely realistic in their content. She worries about the things a real teenager would worry about, to the point of occasionally coming off as childish or petty. (But in a good way!)

Expanded Report: (Warning: This review contains MAJOR spoilers for The Adoration of Jenna Fox.)

The Adoration of Jenna Fox is absolutely the kind of YA science fiction I’ve been bringing up recently: mature, intelligent, and literary, it uses its speculative elements to tell a quiet story of the ramifications of scientific progress rather than choosing to go the formulaic ‘teenagers rebel against their corrupt society’ route. It’s thoughtful and at times thought-provoking, although I never felt as if I was as invested in its story as I could have been.

The premise sounds like it could be from contemporary YA rather than science fiction: Jenna Fox has lost most of her memory following a year-long coma brought on by a terrible car accident…or so she thinks. It quickly becomes obvious that her parents are keeping the truth from her, and that her ‘miraculous’ recovery may have a more frightening explanation than she thought.

So yes, the first third or so of the novel is taken up with Jenna slowly beginning to learn how her parents saved her life. It’s difficult to talk too much about the payoff to all of this, since it would involve major spoilers (which I’m saving for a bit later in the review), but the mystery itself is interspersed with the everyday details of Jenna’s strange new life. She visits her neighbour, reconstructs her partially-lost vocabulary by reading the dictionary, and watches recordings of herself in the hope that it will trigger something in her memory. Pearson conveys all of this in sparse, almost dream-like prose (that description is a cliché, I know, but it’s true in this case), which perfectly conveys Jenna’s disorientation and helplessness. It’s all far more engaging than you might think given the above description.

We’re also shown brief glimpses of the kind of future world we’re dealing with here: medical technology has advanced enormously, yet is strictly controlled by the government to avoid the further creation of drug-resistant super viruses and bacteria. This is something that’s already becoming a major problem in real life, so I had no trouble with suspension of disbelief. As science fiction authors go, Pearson is admirably restrained.

The big reveal itself, however, is handled a bit less gracefully. I’ve already warned for it once, but just to be sure: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

It turns out that only 10% of Jenna’s brain was saved following the crash. The rest of her is a kind of neural network/nanobot construction covered in cloned human skin, something that acts more or less like organic material while actually being completely artificial. A fascinating idea, to be sure, but Jenna’s reactions to all of this struck me as somewhat inauthentic and, to be frank, irritating.

When she first learns about how she was essentially brought back to life, she angsts. When it becomes apparent that her new body has capabilities far beyond what her father predicted (not super-hero abilities, thankfully), she angsts. Upon being told that she could potentially live for 200 years under the right conditions, she once again angsts. I can understand why anybody would be conflicted in that kind of scenario, but the sheer monotony of her limited emotional range gets tiring very fast. Worse is her apparent callousness in the face of the risks her parents took in saving her: in this future, we are told, everybody has a certain number of ‘points’ they can use to replace lost limbs or organs (which is a common necessity due to all of the deadly infections going around), and Jenna’s whole-body resurrection used up all of her allowance and then some. Many people apparently put their careers and even their freedom on the line to help her, yet she shows little indication of caring about them.

All of this sounds as if it’s leading up to some point about bioethics or scientific responsibility, yet that point remains frustratingly vague. One of Jenna’s classmates (who completely steal the limelight during every scene they appear) is a quadruple amputee due to a past infection, yet she still agrees wholeheartedly with the limits placed on medical research. Are we supposed to agree with her? I still have no idea, since Pearson seems content to sketch the vague outlines of several weighty issues without making it clear which side she comes down on – or even what the sides are. The admittedly audacious and fascinating epilogue doesn’t really help with this, since it just muddles everything that came before it.

Ultimately, your enjoyment of the novel’s philosophical ruminations will depend on your own worldview. At one point, Jenna asks her father where in her new body her soul resides. This had me rolling my eyes and wondering when she was going to get her priorities straight (I’d be a bit more worried about that whole ‘You’ll die if you go somewhere too cold’ thing, myself), but others might find it a more compelling question.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox calls to mind authors like Kazuo Ishiguro and Meg Rosoff, who combine speculative elements with a very literary sensibility to create something that almost feels like a new genre. It’s the kind of thing YA desperately needs more of, which means I’m willing to overlook some of its annoyances and recommend it without much hesitation. If you like Ishiguro and Rosoff, you’ll probably like this. (And if you haven’t read anything by either of those people, it might be time for a trip to Amazon.)

Notes from 2012: This review was originally written in early 2011. Reading over it now, I feel like I was unnecessarily harsh. This book still stands out as uniquely thoughtful and literary among most YA releases of the past three or four years, easily trumping most of what passes for science fiction in the YA world of 2012. If you missed it when it was first released, I would urge you to give it a try now.

Once again, just comment on this post by 11.59 PM (EST) on Thursday 9 February for a chance to win an audio book of The Fox Inheritance! US readers only, unfortunately.