OUT OF THE SHADOWS

Tice Cin’s debut is an exhilaratingly idiosyncratic novel set amid north London’s Turkish community

Crackling with energy, interdisciplinary artist Tice Cin’s debut is a kind of textual collage. It offers vistas of the Turkish communities of north London between 1999 and 2012 in pacy, often impressionistic chapters that glitter with inventive descriptions and are dotted with Turkish terms. This is a novel brimming with evocative renderings of gossipmongering in grocery shops, belly dancing lessons, “sweated onions and potatoes … meals that slid oil into you”. The anchoring narrative is a tender family drama: the experiences of single mother Ayla, Ayla’s ageing mother, and Ayla’s teenage daughter, Damla. Cin often places Damla centre stage and she proves to be gimleteyed in her assessments:

When Ayla’s “baby daddy” is imprisoned and leaves her with a stash of heroin to “move”, entrepreneurial Ayla finds herself surrounded by “shadows”, as she attempts to get the drugs sold. She also masterminds the smuggling of drugs from Turkey to the UK in crates of cabbages. The exciting machinations of this crime plot, which involves a dense web of head honchos and underlings, require but also reward attentive reading.

Damla’s arc is the most affecting feature of this polyphonic novel. She contends with predatory neighbours, with “men who try to whittle you down”, with the domestic responsibilities heaped on her as the eldest daughter within her family. Throughout, she remains uniquely sensitive, loyal and compassionate. These qualities come into sharp focus in Cin’s beautiful depiction of Damla’s friendship with “glamorous” Cemile. The nuances of this adolescent relationship are finely, unsentimentally and empathetically observed: it is a vision of sisterly love from a writer who understands the potency of restraint. An exhilaratingly idiosyncratic first novel, Keeping the House has “cult classic” written all over it.