At only 186 pages, The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş is a short intimate narrative about daily life. Asya and her husband Manu have lived abroad in an unnamed foreign country for a few years. Asya is a documentary filmmaker and Manu works for a not-for-profit. 

Asya, my grandmother said, don’t complicate the point. We named you after a whole continent and you’re filming a park.

They worry that they are not living a normal life trajectory, they are playing at being adults rather than committing. They made two decisions to in response to that anxiety. Asya decides to make a film about a local park, and the two decide to look into buying a house.

In a moment of panic, we decided to look for a home.

The story follows Asya as she makes her film and interviews people in the park, and we go with the couple as they look at properties to buy. While these two activities comprise the spine of the plot we also gain insights into Asya and Manus’s lives – their friends dynamics, their parents, and their elderly neighbour with declining health who they visit for tea and to read poetry to.

All the months that I had been filming, I’d thought that there were so many ways of living, of inhabiting the park. I wanted to know as many configurations as possible, all the strange and unique ways. But lately, as I went over the scenes again and again, smoothing their edges, positioning them into a fluid conversation, I’d begun to understand that there was, also, only one way to live beneath the multitude of forms, one way forward through the fleeting hours of the day.

The story is told from Asya’s point of view and reveals her reflections on her days, and ponderings on what she wants her life to be. The ordinariness and subtlety of The Anthropologists, along with the beautiful prose are what make it a delight to read. The ordinary moments of life can also be the most significant.

Where do I feel most like myself? I don’t know how to answer that question. I guess I’m still looking.

The style and feel of The Anthropologists was reminiscent to me of other tender novels like Cold Enough for Snow and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.