"Ana Turns" and two other books by Lisa Gornick

I very recently "discovered" the novels of Lisa Gornick. How glorious it always is to find a new (to me) author! I stumbled across "Ana Turns" (Keylight, 2023) in the new books section of my wonderful local library. The main character, Ana, has been called (by writer Helen Simonson), aptly, "a modern-day Mrs. Dalloway," and is clearly intended by Gornick as such. In this novel, as in Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" (one of my very favorite and most admired novels), we read the story of the day of a woman, with many flashbacks to, and thoughts on, the complicated events and relationships she has experienced. Both novels lead up to a dinner party. Along the way in "Ana Turns," as 60-year-old Ana moves about in current-day New York, we learn of her complex family history, her lovers, her friends. Gornick expertly interweaves these various actors and actions, vividly painting one woman's life, a life that will resonate with the lives of many contemporary women. I was so enchanted with "Ana Turns" that I then found and read two of Gornick's earlier books. "Louisa Meets Bear" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), is a novel that is formed by a set of interlinked stories in which it is not at first clear what the connections are among the stories, but gradually (almost) all is revealed. The third Gornick book I read was "The Peacock Feast" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). As with the other two books, this novel is not at all linear, but roams back and forth in time over a century, focusing on a now almost-100-year-old woman, Prudence, and her family history, mostly in New York City and environs, but with visits to Europe and elsewhere. Also as with the other narratives, the family history holds both great love and great troubles. Readers must be patient as the various plot lines are untangled, but this is not onerous and is part of the pleasure of the books. What a brilliant writer Gornick is, drawing us into her stories, making us wonder and speculate and, in at least one instance for this reader, weep. I highly recommend all three books. (Oh, and yes, the author is, as I wondered about and then found out with a little online research, the niece of feminist essayist/memoirist/literary critic Vivian Gornick, a writer whose work I have long admired and treasured; see my posts of 10/15/15 and 3/28/20.)