There are moments when Leyla’s analyses can border on the self-serious ... At its most compelling, though, Leyla’s voice is wry and reflective, curious about her own ambivalences. Koca especially shines when illuminating 'women’s pain' ... The narrative force in The Applicant comes not primarily from Leyla’s precarious status under the Fiktionsbescheinigung, or even her impending choice between the inconstant life of an artist and the stability offered by her lover. It comes from a quieter uncertainty.
A frenetic tear through a cosmopolitan world of all-night techno and ketamine-fueled encounters ... With its clipped, direct sentences and its abundance of resonant questions, long and short, Koca’s prose mirrors this narrative doubleness—giving readers an experience that is both irresistibly consumable yet compellingly durable.
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.
A gut-wrenching story ... A truly unique book ... This is a powerful book that pinpoints exactly where our contradictions lie. It is so powerful, in fact, that it can do all this while still making you laugh.
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.
Kinetic ... Koca is at her best when focusing on Leyla’s everyday experiences ... 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.
