The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Jenna Fox is a seventeen-year-old girl originally from Boston who now lives in southern California. At the beginning of The Adoration of Jenna Fox, she has just emerged from a year-long coma and remembers nothing of her previous life. She is understandably wary of her parents and her grandmother, and is initially cold towards them, as she is not yet able to process emotions. “I’ve only just learned how to smile” (3), she reports. “I don’t know how to match [Mother’s] other expressions” (3). She calls her grandmother by her first name, Lily, displaying a disconnection from others, and declares that she does not love her mother. “How can you love someone you don’t know?” (9), she asks. Jenna is oddly literal and speaks in an overly formal way. Despite the trauma of her coma, Jenna is independent and eager to make her own decisions from the start. Though Lily urges her to watch the most recent home video disc first, Jenna decides, “I will watch the videos in order” (12). Though Mother orders her to stay inside the house, she ventures outside.

As Jenna learns more about her world, her desire for independence and her chafing at her restrictions becomes even more apparent.