The Applicant

October 15, 2022
In 2017, 26-year-old Leyla, a Turk, is living in Berlin, working as a cleaner at a hostel. She has come to the city to be a writer, but, she complains, her words don't have freedom. Perhaps that's because her quotidian life consists of working, visiting friends, and getting drunk or high. On a whim, she decides to keep a diary, and that document becomes the core of the novel. In the diary, she records the failure of her university thesis on which her visa depends and her meeting with a Swede, who is like "a goodhearted giant from a Grimms' fairy tale." They begin an affair, and part of her wants to marry him and call it a life. But could it be? Koca's novel starts out very much on one note, and it takes a while for Leyla to come alive. But gradually she becomes multidimensional, and her story takes on meaning, as she closes it with a timely declaration: "Westerners never understand how immigration works for people who are from unwanted countries."

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 14, 2022
Koca’s kinetic debut follows the struggles of a failed graduate student from Turkey in 2017 Berlin. Leyla, 26, lives in a state of limbo after her thesis was declared not “academic enough.” In response, she filed a lawsuit against the university, and while waiting for a verdict, she works as a cleaner at a trendy hostel, writes in her diary, and worries about being sent back to Turkey. (Off days are spent drinking and snorting ketamine.) Leyla also wants to be a writer, and at the suggestion of friends, she considers turning her diary into a series of performances and a memoir. Meanwhile, she hooks up with a Swedish lover and begins to fall for him, frequently traveling to Gothenburg to spend time together. Koca is at her best when focusing on Leyla’s everyday experiences; she does a good job blending the mundane details (diary entries parse the plots of Turkish soap operas and tally the “treasures” Leyla finds left behind at the hostel) and nightlife exploits, but as Leyla’s star as a performer rises and her lawsuit verdict nears, the narrative wobbles as it rushes to its unbalanced ending. Leyla’s a charismatic enough lead, but she’s let down by the plotting. Agent: Elias Altman, Massie & McQuilkin.

Starred review from January 13, 2023

DEBUT In Turkish-born, U.S.-based Koca's debut, 24-year-old Leyla has recently emigrated from her native Turkey to Berlin, Germany, where she has come to study. Struggling with issues over her thesis, she works as a cleaner in a hostel, goes clubbing all night, and indulges in drugs and sex in a search for self. The narrative, written in diary format, vibrates with passion and intellectual possibilities as the reader gradually learns of Leyla's childhood with an alcoholic father, who serves time in prison for killing someone while driving drunk, as well as a passive mother unable to cope with life. Leyla comes to realize that "wishes die slower deaths than their makers, passing on from generation to generation, wilting everything they touch." She also discovers that writing is her safety net as she finds that no one person will be the answer to all of her needs and desires. VERDICT Excellently written, this first work presents Leyla as an authentic individual who will not easily be forgotten, and exquisitely explores the frustrations and insights of an inquiring mind sorting out past history, boyfriends and lovers, dreams and reality. Fans of Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi's Call Me Zebra will appreciate.--Lisa Rohrbaugh

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2022
A young Turkish writer on a student visa in Berlin records her day-to-day experiences as time runs out on both her visa status and her dreams of remaking her life on her own terms. Leyla, born in Istanbul and raised by an embittered mother and abusive, alcoholic father, is in love with Berlin. When she first visited at 21, Berlin seemed like a place where she "wouldn't have to give up on her dreams to stay alive," a city of vagabonds where she could write the kinds of books that get Turkish novelists thrown in prison, inoculated from childhood voices telling her what she could not do. Five years later, Leyla's master's thesis has failed, forcing her to sue the university for readmittance or be deported back to Turkey. While she waits in bureaucratic limbo for her case to be resolved, Leyla is not allowed to either enroll in another program or take a full-time job, but must make ends meet working part time as a cleaner at an Alice in Wonderland- themed hostel. As she negotiates her destabilizing new reality--not the bold writer she feels she should have become, not the model minority able to slot her identity into the Germanic system, not the dutiful daughter her sister resents her being to their mother in Istanbul but an invisible cog at the "bottom of the immigrant hierarchy"--Leyla throws herself further into the Berlin club scene, seeking solace, or at least oblivion, in the hypnosis of all-night dancing, drugs, and casual sexual encounters. Written in journal-style entries, Koca's debut novel keeps its pace taut without ever seeming strained or frenetic. Leyla is a witty, acutely observant, and deeply sympathetic character who manages to tell the details of her life--both the transcendent epiphanies and the debauched aftermaths--with an honesty that disavows patronizing pity. This is a book about some of the largest issues of our time--ethnic identity, national belonging, the psychological traumas of patriarchy and White supremacy, sexual ownership, feminist reckoning--but it is also, and perhaps primarily, a book about the intimacy between a character and a reader as one agrees to talk and the other agrees to listen. A powerful debut that heralds a voice intent on being heard.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.