Ana Turns
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
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 of The 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gornick (The Peacock Feast) spins an immersive story of a Manhattan editor on her 60th birthday. Among those invited to Ana Koehl's celebratory dinner are her stoner anesthesiologist husband, Henry; her best friend Fiona; her son, Simon, who has begun questioning his gender identity; and Lance, her long-term lover and proof positive that Ana is a "careful cheat." Also invited are Ana's semi-estranged brother George and her caustic mother, Jean, who sends her a terse email on the morning of her birthday detailing how much it cost to raise Ana ("Had I invested that money starting at your birth rather than spending it year by year on you, it would have grown with compound interest"). Gornick complicates the story by alternating Ana's perspective with those of the other characters, including Henry, who meets with Fiona for lunch before Ana's party. It turns out the two once had an affair, and Henry thinks they should tell Ana ("You need to be a bit less shtetl and a bit more français," Fiona responds). Crisp and clever writing abounds, and Ana's response during the climactic dinner scene to her mother's cruelty is particularly piercing. Gornick strikes all the right notes in this complex and moving character study. Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the protagonist's occupation and mischaracterized the relationship between two other characters.
