But reading the novel through, it becomes apparent something is missing from the narrative. The author’s approach is bold, considering a quick Google reveals enough to justify a sneaking feeling this book is at least semi-autobiographical. Both Ozdamar and our unnamed protagonist shared an early love of theatre and poetry that impacted their lives in a profound manner. This and the author’s embrace of left-wing politics manifests itself in a manner of story-telling that is interestingly secular and poetic. The protagonist recalls being told: ‘“Finish school, otherwise your father won’t give you any money. You could be a lawyer, you love speaking. Lawyers are like actors, but they don’t starve do they? Do your leaving certificate.” I replied: “Adi olmayan cinsten bir ruhum (I am a spirit of no common rate)”.’

Her state of mind is illustrated by some poignant references and quotations throughout, and is more interesting and subtle than some of the stale ideas that crop up in immigration tales: leaving my homeland has left me emotionally disfigured, no-one understands me. The book is a series of snapshots that describe a life lived visually, framed by quotes from Shakespeare, Brecht and Baudelaire. It is vivid, reflective; it also partly explains where Ozdamar gets it wrong.

The thing is that, lovely as the poetics are, and as much as the author expertly sculpts metaphors highlighting the zeitgeisty concerns of the left-wing literati at the time, from Vietnam all the way to, er… Vietnam again, the novel fails to land home in any particular area. For instance in one passage the precocious narrator describes seeing: ‘The ruin of the Anhalt railway station, which like the Hebbel theatre was opposite our hostel. We called it the broken station. The Turkish word for “broken” also means offended. So it was also called “the offended station”.’

A pregnant metaphor of the scars Germany bore from the war as well as a comment on the confusion the culture clash of immigration can cause for the identities of those young enough - and not so stubbornly rooted in the culture of the motherland – to appreciate the possible benefits of being in a new environment and fashioning a new identity separate of their parents. However, frustratingly it is left at that. There is no discussion, overt or otherwise, of its possible significance, and the reader is left only with oblique references that appear to say little that is not put in cryptic terms: ‘In front of the offended station there was a phone booth. When the three of us walked past it, we talked loudly, as if our parents in Turkey could hear us.’

At the eighteenth mention of the ‘offended station’ without some kind of elucidation of ideas for the reader to latch onto, the experience becomes nauseatingly wearing. This lack of introspection seems to plague Ozdamar’s work as a whole. Not that the narrative isn’t thoughtful: there are some promising characters and instances described throughout. For example, the Communist hostel warden who fires the protagonist’s burning interest in art and politics, his ideas feeding her imagination and grating against the secular conservatism of her peers who forget that, ‘when the Turks fought against the Sultan, they often called themselves Bolsheviks, because the Russian Bolsheviks supported the Turkish liberation war with weapons and gold. Perhaps your grandfather also said he was a Bolshevik, why are you afraid of this word?’. 

But without some sort of overarching narrative glue, some sign that the infinite, discrete occurrences have a continuing purpose, the characterisation can seem insubstantial, the exposition opaque. It would not be a contradiction to say the book is reflective yet lacking in depth. In spite of the poetics, there is nothing to give solid meaning to the constant metaphors. There is little appreciable insight into the emotions of the characters; they exist as broad-brush impressions, capable of being analysed through the ever-present description, but lacking punch at the fundamental emotional level usually seen in immigrant literature. This would be fine were we talking about Kundera or something with self-professed academic or philosophical objectives, but in this case, the perpetual descriptions seem to get in the way, gradually seeming more extrinsic and artsy-fartsy, the reader left waiting for the expositional payoff that never arrives.

It is a shame, since this is novel at pains to take a viewpoint that, while not aloof or dispassionate, avoids being either unpalatably saccharine or being so emotionally heavy-handed as to constitute the literary equivalent of being hit in the face with a chapati pan.

The crux of the conflict between the literary accomplishment of the author, and the overall roundness of the plot, could be that the purpose of the novel seems unclear. The protagonist, who clearly seems a vehicle for the author’s own experiences, lives a life of sparkling gems of happiness and excitement, set among mountains of dross, but what Ozdamar wishes to show us is never really ascertainable. A mundane existence lifted by the ecstasies and liberation that art and politics can provide hand in hand? Or the story of a woman who views her surroundings with fresh eyes that see beauty in a world changing beneath her feet? The result is an unsustainable mélange of the two that undermines the tone of the entire novel.

The Bridge of the Golden Gate is at times poignant, beautiful and thought-provoking, but ultimately creates the feeling it should have been a novella or a short story, with more direction and less wistfulness bordering on self-indulgence. A diamond in the rough.