July 5, 2021
This evocative if slippery debut follows two generations of Turkish Cypriots trying to make their way in England. In 2006, Damla, 15, lives with her immigrant mother, Ayla; two younger siblings; and grandmother in the London neighborhood of Tottenham. She spends her days hanging out with sexually precocious Cemile, whose concerned family sends her to live with relatives in Cyprus, after which Damla loses contact with her. The narration flashes back to the late 1990s, when Ayla engineers a clever way to transport heroin from Turkey into England by growing cabbages with packages of heroin inserted so the leaves will fully enclose them. She convinces a group including Cemile’s father, Ufuk, to help out with the audacious scheme. The plan totters, though, leaving the crew in debt to their notoriously dangerous supplier. Flash forward to the early 2010s, when Ayla announces to Damla that she is moving back to Cyprus. The fragmented chronology and shaggy subplots involving, for instance, Damla’s teenage sexual relationships, don’t really cohere, though the musical bursts of Turkish and blocks of poetry (“Lies have a way of bursting in your mouth. / Her mouth, holding secrets, not the same as lying”) impress. Still, in the end it’s all a bit too oblique.
August 1, 2021
Three generations of Turkish Cypriots navigate British culture while profiting off the London underworld. This is nominally a story about crime and punishment among immigrants in London's multicultural Tottenham neighborhood, but interdisciplinary artist Cin throws in everything but the kitchen sink in terms of language, story, and structure. At the book's center is Damla, born in 1991; the narrative encompasses her adolescence and early adulthood, but it's more a story about the sacrifices people make to protect their families and themselves. In addition to Damla and her siblings, İpek and Erhan, the book spends a lot of time flashing back to the origins of their mother, Ayla, and their grandmother Makbule as well as a host of friends, lovers, criminals, and partners in crime. There's a plot in here somewhere, something to do with Ayla's scheme to smuggle heroin into the country disguised in cabbages, of all things, but there's no consistency to the story. There is, however, some remarkable writing as well as keen characterizations of Damla's companions, none of whom are painted in black and white. The book's greatest strength is its intense observational scrutiny, whether of the ubiquitous doldrums of work or the acute differences in the ways Damla and the people around her, notably her mother and grandmother, experience the world. The fragmented structure makes it read almost like a scrapbook; real deliberation is required in order to unearth the primary story and numerous subplots among scatterings of poetry and abrupt shifts in point of view. It's clear there's a method to the madness, though, as Cin writes, "Being the heroine of your own love story starts with a belief in magnetism, pulling the right corresponding elements towards you and somehow sifting out the debris." An anarchic, experimental debut a bit too novel for its own good.
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