HOLIDAY COUNTRY

Ayse Babahan thoughtfully narrates this coming-of-age story. Ada feels forever suspended between two states of being. She is one person during the school year in California and another during summers spent with her mother and grandmother in a holiday villa along the Turkish coast. In her nineteenth year, when a chance encounter occurs and an old romance rekindles, all the disparate elements of her life collide. Babahan's subtle narration captures Ada's immersion in the liminal space of young adulthood. Her voice and inflections waver between jaded and childlike as Ada rethinks what she truly wants from the future and what she believes her mother needs from the past. Babahan smoothly incorporates Turkish dialect where appropriate. N.M. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2024]