The first of Şebnem İşigüzel’s eight novels to be translated into English, The Girl in the Tree is a somewhat surreal tale. It does what it says on the tin - it’s the story of a young girl who decides to live out the rest of her life in a tree. While up there, she reflects on her family history and conducts a relationship with some guy she barely knows.

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Narrated in a jumpy and bold first person, we get right inside our protagonist’s head, which can be disconcerting at times as her thoughts don’t follow any sort of linear pattern. One paragraph she’ll be regaling us with a funny tale about her foul-mouthed grandma and the next she’s recounting instances of shocking police brutality during protests. If you read some of the other reviews available, you’ll see they say the same thing: it ends up being difficult to follow.

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Usually I’m a huge fan of stream of consciousness novels, as well as novels that jump back and forth in time, so I’m unsure why this one didn’t work for me. Maybe the transitions were too clunky. I also never really clicked with the narrator’s voice. İşigüzel does portray well the trials and tribulations of a young girl living through a politically tumultuous time, while also facing personal trauma. All the ingredients for a book I’d love were there but something just went wrong during the cooking (I’m bad at metaphors okay).

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The translation by Mark David Wyers is very good though. I found the prose easy to read, if not particularly exciting stylistically, and he manages to keep the tone of a teenage girl all the way through.

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I certainly wouldn’t be averse to reading more from this author in the future, hopefully I will click better with whatever novel of hers is translated next!