My One Hundred Adventures (review)

Life in a beautiful old oceanfront house in a small coastal town would satisfy many people, but twelve-year-old Jane Fielding finds herself yearning for more, so, exhorted by preacher Nellie Phipps to pray, Jane prays for one hundred adventures. And adventures she gets: she meets a man who may have been her father, or the father of one of her three younger siblings (her mother’s statement is a little unclear), who later drowns; she’s pressed by Nellie Phipps into delivering Bibles, which leads her to an illicit hot-air balloon ride, a Bible-bruised baby, and compensatory babysitting; and she meets three other old boyfriends of her mother, two of whom seem to want to be current boyfriends as well. The blend of dreamy contemplation and absurdity is classic Horvath, yet there’s an unusual thread of joy running through the narrative, with the waves of the sea and the summer (there’s much making of jam from seasonal berries) shimmering in the background and both Jane’s maturation and the climactic events providing a genuinely happy ending. There’s still plenty of spiky strangeness in detail and event, but since Jane herself is beginning to look at the world anew and reconsider much of it that she’s taken for granted, the quotidian and the peculiar receive the same narrative scrutiny that vibrates between wonderment and acceptance. The classic summer-story frame will invite new readers as well as Horvath fans, and newbies and veterans alike will appreciate this celebration of a summer of growth and change.