Paperback : $30.65
Featured in Buzz Books 2023 Great Reads Fall/Winter
"A wealth of keen insight and just the right touch of delightful humor." —Sigrid Nunez, author ofThe Friend
A kaleidoscopic story, unspooling over the twenty-four hours of a very contemporary woman’s sixtieth birthday.
Nine years have passed since Ana Koehl had sex with her pot-addicted anesthesiologist husband, seven since she began an affair with a gonzo journalist. She’s gratified by her work as a book doula, but burdened by her belief that she need always be on call. Her elderly mother’s birthday greeting is an inflation-adjusted calculation of the cost of raising Ana in a mice-infested house, her brother has hijacked the will of their recently deceased starchitect father, her adult child is changing rapidly before her eyes, and her best friend advocates for “the truth in lies.” Gazing out at the dark moat of Central Park from behind her desk, Ana sees that she can no longer postpone making peace with her past or confronting her present.
Narrated by Ana and the key figures in her life—her husband, her brother, her lover’s wife, to name a few—Ana Turns spirals through issues from capital punishment to the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas, culminating in a watershed dinner party, with Ana’s family members’ true colors on full display. By day’s end, the bounds of her own collaboration and forgiveness illuminated, Ana turns towards a vision of what she wants next in this blink of a life.
Show moreFeatured in Buzz Books 2023 Great Reads Fall/Winter
"A wealth of keen insight and just the right touch of delightful humor." —Sigrid Nunez, author ofThe Friend
A kaleidoscopic story, unspooling over the twenty-four hours of a very contemporary woman’s sixtieth birthday.
Nine years have passed since Ana Koehl had sex with her pot-addicted anesthesiologist husband, seven since she began an affair with a gonzo journalist. She’s gratified by her work as a book doula, but burdened by her belief that she need always be on call. Her elderly mother’s birthday greeting is an inflation-adjusted calculation of the cost of raising Ana in a mice-infested house, her brother has hijacked the will of their recently deceased starchitect father, her adult child is changing rapidly before her eyes, and her best friend advocates for “the truth in lies.” Gazing out at the dark moat of Central Park from behind her desk, Ana sees that she can no longer postpone making peace with her past or confronting her present.
Narrated by Ana and the key figures in her life—her husband, her brother, her lover’s wife, to name a few—Ana Turns spirals through issues from capital punishment to the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas, culminating in a watershed dinner party, with Ana’s family members’ true colors on full display. By day’s end, the bounds of her own collaboration and forgiveness illuminated, Ana turns towards a vision of what she wants next in this blink of a life.
Show moreLisa Gornick has been hailed by NPR as 'one of the most perceptive, compassionate writers of fiction in America...immensely talented and brave'. She is the author of four previous novels, most recentlyThe Peacock FeastandLouisa Meets Bear,both published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Her essays have appeared widely, including in theNew York Times,theParis Review, Real Simple,and theWall Street Journal.A graduate of the Yale clinical psychology program and the psychoanalytic training program at Columbia, where she is on the faculty, she was for many years a practicing psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. She lives in New York City with her family. You can learn about Lisa and her work at lisagornickauthor.com.
“With each glorious, hilarious page I found myself turning with
Ana, one of the most original creations I’ve seen in a while and,
to steal from Lermontov, truly A Heroine of Our Time.” —Gary
Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends
“I fell in love with Ana, a modern-day Mrs. Dalloway crisscrossing
New York City to discover the unexpected truths about her life,
lovers and impossible family. An exquisitely written love letter to
what it means to be a grown-up woman.” —Helen Simonson, author of
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand“This moving portrait of a woman
assessing the friendships, romances, and family relationships that
have shaped her sixty years contains a wealth of keen insight
and just the right touch of delightful humor.” —Sigrid Nunez,
author of What Are You Going Through
“Lisa Gornick’s Ana Turns is a beautifully written and propulsive
novel of desire and longing, regret and forgiveness. Ana is my
favorite kind of character—deeply perceptive, surprisingly funny,
and smart as hell. I loved this novel.” —Angie Kim, author of
Miracle Creek“It’s a great feat to capture a whole life through the
lens of a single day. Lisa Gornick’s Ana Turns does this
beautifully in a series of vivid encounters with both the present
and the past on the momentous occasion of her sixtieth birthday.
It’s exciting to watch Ana risk revealing her true feelings and to
ultimately discover what she wants and deserves. But this isn’t
only an internal story. The novel sweeps through history and
travels all over the world to show the influences Ana is bringing
with her into each moment, alone or with others. Ana Turns is a
powerful story of a woman coming into her own.” —Alice Elliott
Dark, author of Fellowship Point
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