An Honest Telling
Turner Grant Author Interview
To Venus and Back: One Man’s Quest to Rediscover Love is your story about becoming a widower and single parent at the age of fifty-one and your return to the dating world two years later. Why was this an important book for you to write?
There was an odd inner pull I felt to write my story, a story I never would have believed if I hadn’t lived it. I thought people needed an honest telling—from a man’s—perspective of what can happen in the world of dating, love, and sex. Dating memoirs and relationship books are a significant non-fiction category but are differentiated by gender. There are books about dating and relationships for women by women (spoiler alert, men don’t fare well) and the same for men (bro-books often written with locker-room mentalities). My book uniquely bridges this divide and fills a void—a dating memoir about women for women written by a man.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
The biggest thing is that there are still people in this world—men in particular—for whom kindness is paramount. I also wanted to debunk the pervasive popular cultural thinking among some women that men are rather clueless—and maybe a bit unfeeling—when it comes to love. Lastly, for those who think love is about checking all the boxes, that’s not love. That’s accounting.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
Several things were particularly hard. One was writing about various intimate situations. That was oddly strange in a way I’ve never felt before. Another was writing about—confessing—difficult personal failings and doubts. But if I was being honest about my story, I had to fess up and be honest about everything, including where I felt I was falling short. By far the most difficult thing I wrote about however was describing how my wife died. When I began writing my memoir I swore to myself I would not write about how she died. I didn’t think I could do it and I talked myself into thinking it wasn’t relevant for a book about the crazy world of online dating in middle age. But then I realized I had to, and it changed the narrative.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your story?
We all have in our lives certain things we never talk about and never share—that which is the most personal and intimate and rarely makes it past a hushed conversation with a trusted friend if even that. After all is said and done, and after years of writing and all the work that went into it, I’m not sure how much the big picture on dating, relationships, and sex will change because of my book. But I do know for sure that between the covers of the book, one thing has changed—a man has spoken about things we just don’t speak about, and it’s one incredible story.
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Two years after the unexpected death of his wife, Turner Grant—architect and father of twin boys in Washington DC—was ready to consider love once more. Yet everything had changed, and he soon found himself adrift in the digital-dating world. At age fifty-one, Turner Grant became a widower and single parent to his twin boys. Deep in grief, he often found daily routines difficult and his work arduous. But after two years, Turner embarked on a journey to find his future, both in life and love. What Turner discovered shocked him. After tentative steps into the shallow dating waters, he was quickly immersed in a deep ocean filled with unexpected riptides and crosscurrents within a digital-dating universe that didn’t exist when he last dated decades earlier. In three years, he met fifty-four single, middle-aged women who took him to a totally different world—Venus. It was a journey—a journey that’s, well … complicated.
