The Anthropologists by Ayșegül Savaș: book review
Overview: Lena and Manu are looking to buy an apartment in the city where they now live but aren't from. It feels like home, but it doesn't. Between house hunting and contemplating what makes an adult life, Lena is working on her documentary about everyday life, focused on her favorite park. They're also grappling with their friend groups and the people in their lives, relationship that are always changing and evolving. This is a slice of life novel to the highest degree, set adrift in an unnamed city. Overall: 5
Characters: 5 I loved sitting with Lena and Manu through this short novel. This book isn't about loud characters that explode off the page but rather characters that could be you, your neighbor, your best friend. The city and county is never explicitly specified, and this vagueness continues into the people in this world. There are defining characteristics, but they could also be anyone in the best way possible. Usually, this vagueness is frustrating and keeps me from getting into a book, but it really worked here. Lena and Manu married relatively young after going to university together, and they've built a quiet life together, which Lena often scrutinizes against what's seen as a good life. She wonders if she wants children in a detached way. She wonders if she does fit into the city they've decided to call home. She wonders if she's a good enough daughter and if she's built strong enough friendships. I related to all of these themes so deeply, and it made the characters endearing.
Plot: 5 This isn't a vastly plot driven book by any means, but it does have a uniting heartbeat. At first, it feels like these individually titled scenes stitched together are just wandering through images of life, much like Lena's documentary. As the book continues, though, it's clear that there are a few themes that the scenes are uniting around. There's the parallel stories about the older lady in their building that Lena and Manu go to great lengths to spend time with and her grandmother who she can't visit because of her residency papers who is facing health problems. There's the ongoing sagas in their friendships, as small and interior as these shifts seem on the surface. The largest driving thread is their house hunt and the question of whether they'll become homeowners before the book is over against the odds. There is so much life in this novel, and it's so simply put forward, but it takes an immense amount of skill to make a book like this work.
Writing: 5 The writing in this book is beautiful in this simplicity. Lena's goal with the documentary is to highlight what is so special about the mundane against the odds of how storytelling typically works. The book delivers on Lena's mission entirely. There is such a beauty in watching these couple pages of life in glimpses come together in such a satisfying way. I felt seen, I felt able to glimpse into a life a few years of mine, and I felt entirely convinced on the importance of the mundane.
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