“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
“Written in the vein of Mrs. Dalloway…. Ana is a richly developed main character surrounded by an intriguing supporting cast…in this thoughtful meditation on how time affects the bonds of family, friendship, and romance. Engaging and introspective.” —Kirkus Reviews
"Over the course of one long, intense, illuminating day, Ana Koehl takes stock of herself, the people she loves, and the ever-shifting world around her. This beautifully written novel is an astute and perceptive portrait of a woman hovering on the brink of change." —Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles and Orphan Train
“Gornick gives us 24 hours with a dazzling woman and her complicated life on the day she turns 60. All the key players—her pot-addicted doctor husband, her greedy brother, her nasty mother, her longtime lover and his wife...—put in bravura appearances.” —Marion Winick, Newsday
“An immersive story of a Manhattan editor on her 60th birthday…. 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.” —Publishers Weekly
"Lisa Gornick no longer practices as a therapist, but her empathy and keen insight are on glorious display in
Ana Turns. Forget the cliched, peppy 'women of a certain age' you see in movies: Ana is fully-rendered in all of her complexities, as are all the people in her life. A rich, dense, original exploration of marriage, family, and what it means to age gracefully.”
—Lisa Zeidner, author of Love Bomb“An intelligent, humorous, and character-driven book that is full of complicated family dynamics, romantic and professional pursuits, and friendships…. Extremely well suited for raucous book club discussions.” —
Deborah Miller, The Jewish Book Council“Brilliantly assembles a literary quilt wherein each of the composite stories, like quilt “patches,” may stand alone in their artistry, with the stunning whole more than the sum of its parts.... Gornick, in her wise and masterful prose, has shown us that it is family, the ménage it always is, that forms the world.” —
Lloyd Sederer, New York Journal of Books
