Ayşegül Savaş builds on her background in sociology and anthropology for her novel. A piece which grew out of her New Yorker story “Future Selves.” It centres on Asya and her partner Manu both relocated from their homelands to study in a European city not unlike Paris, there they met and became a couple. Now they’re ready to put down deeper roots, hunting for an apartment to buy, the perfect space in which to carve out their future life – an idea that grew out of Savaş’s own experiences of searching for a new home in a time of wider, post-pandemic restlessness.

Savaş sets out to chart the ways in which people might decide how to be in the world, particularly when uprooted or “estranged,” inhabiting spaces which operate according to a different set of rules and rituals, far removed from the ones they grew up with, and far away from their families. For Asya and Manu their everyday’s shaped by their relationships with each other, the shows they watch, the friends they chose to spend time with – particularly their close friend Ravi, and their neighbour the older Tereza who welcomes them into her home so that it becomes a familiar spot in their landscape.

Asya trained in anthropology but is also a filmmaker, working on documentaries similar to the kind associated with directors like Agnès Varda. Her latest project revolves around a neighbourhood park and its regulars, interviews with these are scattered throughout the novel. Asya uses anthropological frameworks around culture, about kinship, to analyse her own behaviour, to ponder the unspoken rules of the society around her. She’s fascinated by how others attempt to define her through what she does, where she comes from, how she speaks…

Savaş’s narrative’s deliberately episodic, broken down into short, captioned scenes that have a slightly cinematic quality, a reflection of the scenes that might stand out in daily life: a sighting of a local celebrity at a café; breakfast with a friend; a day trip. Here, these events unfold against the backdrop of a troubled world, marked by climate change, ageing and illness, all of which Asya and Manu must grapple with yet somehow strive to make individual choices.

Savaş was influenced here by writers like Tove Jansson and by New Wave cinema. But I felt her narrative lacked Jansson’s charm or the quirkier, more memorable aspects of New Wave. I could see there was a conscious overlap with Rohmer, films like Godard’s Une Femme Est Une Femme, but I found Savaş’s characters far less engaging, verging on one-dimensional - they never fully came to life for me. There were very few memorable scenes or lines; Savaş’s exploration of banality was often just too banal to stir my interest.

The concept itself has potential but the use of anthropological and sociological frameworks - drawn from theorists like Bourdieu – seemed rather unsophisticated, although the writing on a sentence level is more than decent. I was puzzled too by the lack of any real political analysis, there are obvious issues here around taste groups, around class, that are underexplored, taken as given. Nor is there any recognition of the impact of globalisation, the products, the customs that have been widely exported from Christmas to McDonald’s, so that much of contemporary society is both varied and curiously uniform. So, while I found this perfectly readable, the narrative never quite took off for me, perhaps I just wasn’t the right fit?

The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas is a beautifully written novel about ordinary everyday life - friendships, relationships, neighbours and community, family, ageing, identity.

For what was a relaxed paced book, I really enjoy led following the lives of Asya and Manu as they navigate life in a new country. Asya, a filmmaker and Manu, a 9-5 worker, looked to form new friendships and to settle into life but Asya didn’t seem to be confident that they were living the ‘right way’ - lots of friends and their own home. I particularly loved their friendship with Tereza, the old lady that lived upstairs. They were caring and considerate and formed meaningful relationships. It was a relatable reading experience, one that I could empathise with.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for this ARC.

The book is narrated by Aysa – trained as an anthropologist and now a funded documentary filmmaker. She lives in a foreign City (in what I at least took as the USA) with her boyfriend Manu who she originally met doing fieldwork in his hometown and who now works at a nonprofit. The two of them are looking at moving out of their current rented apartment and buying somewhere together to make more of a foundation to their lives in what for both of them is something of a country of exile from their own (different) countries. Aysa meanwhile bases her documentary om filming interviews with those who use a local park.

Their small group of friends include: Ravi “We recognized in him something we recognized in each other: the mix of openness and suspicion; a desire to establish rules by which to live, and only a vague idea about what those rules should be.”– the three forming a tight group, particularly Manu and Ravi; Lena – Aysa’s “only native friend in the City” who she met at a monthly expatriates group; Tereza – an elderly and increasingly dementia affected lady who lives above them. They are also visited by both sets of parents – which reminds them of their very different lives in their hometowns where they would be part of interwoven community of family/tribal ties and obligations.

And these ideas of community, family, tribe lie at the very heart of the novel and Aysa’s quest – really seeking to make her and Manu’s new life into something meaningful by working out (and in some cases founding) the series of rituals, the ties of friendship, that will make up their new life including of course where they will choose to live (and how they will choose to live there).

The novel is told in a very fragmentary form – short sections all with a heading and with a number of headings repeating. For example Future Selves (which are the sections where they view possible new homes and imagine their lives there); Principles of Kinship (which are largely sections about the friendships and relationships they are building); In the Park (records of Aysa’s interview – with Fieldwork her initial preparation); Ways To Live (as Aysa tries to assemble rituals that will define their lives “the green jacket, the ceremonial stones, breakfast with Manu, the Dame on the terrace, and the shapes of poems”). And with many more one-off: Courtship, Child Rearing, Urban Costume, Gift Exchange etc.
Overall this is a simple novel – but one with a deeper meaning despite its rather quirky approach. At one point Aysa’s grandmother chides her over the phone: “Forget about daily life … We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.”. And that of course lies at the heart of the novel – one which does not tell an epochal tale but instead examines what it means to make a life together, particularly away from family and home.

The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas.
Publication date: August 1st.

I’ve never read any of Savas’ previous writing and was drawn to this book by its beautiful cover. It was such a surprise of a novel, I loved it. At under 200 pages , this book is close to profound in its examination and celebration of the extraordinary everyday. It is difficult to categorise this book, told in a series of vignettes , there is little plot , the dialogue and descriptions are sparse and yet this book is bursting with life, ordinary glorious everyday life.

Asya and Manu are a couple living in a universal modern city, they are both from different places and this city is where they have decided to build their life. They are considering buying an apartment and trying to decide what their life should and will look like, what traditions and rituals can they create and what people will they know and befriend when their own families are so far away.

This is a book about how to make a life and the small things we curate , nurture , choose and yearn for to do so. It’s a novel about longing and belonging , love and loneliness, family , friendship and everyday adulting . Brilliantly executed ,wise and brimming with the magic of the ordinary. A gorgeous read . Recommend.

4-4.5 stars

'The Anthropologists' is a fascinating, hard-to-pigeonhole novel, narrated by Asya, a young woman of an unspecified nationality who is married to man of a different nationality/ethnicity, again unspecified. They are living together in a city (you guessed it, unnamed, but possibly Paris) in a country foreign to them both. Asya is a documentary film maker, whose latest project is interviewing people using a city park to find out why they go there. The story progresses in very short chapters, some just a page, made up of snapshots of their life - their encounters with friends and neighbours, efforts to find a property to buy, conversations with parents far away, and Asya's interviews. The short chapters mean it flows along really quickly.

Although that sounds aimless, threads of narrative emerge and the scenes are all chronological. There's the progression of dementia in a neighbour, a possible romance between two of their friends, and their hunt for a house. All of these give a satisfying story arc to a style of book that might otherwise have lacked one. Savas is a good observer of human nature, and captures perfectly that sense of uncertainty that many of us will recognise from our own youths (or even current lives, no matter how old we've become!) about how to live and whether we are making the right choices. It isn't angsty, just quietly full of reality and the sometimes difficult things we come across.

It isn't a book where you feel a strong emotional connection to the characters or have a powerful reaction, but I suspect it will have a much more long lasting impact on me than a story that moves me in the moment and is forgotten. There is something very profound about it, whilst being utterly unpretentious. I will definitely be reading more of Savas' work.

Ahhhhh beautiful!!! teetering on the 4.5 or 5 stars, can't decide.

"What if you only learned something emotionally new?"

I loved this little book, more than words will ever really know. It feels as though everything I love about life wrapped up. It's a story about a couple looking for a new flat in a city, it's a mundane context, but it draws out the beautiful simplicity of attempting to build a life in modern day.

In reviews I tend to self project, and I understand it isn't really about the book, but it's what it makes me feel and this one makes me feel so much! It reminded me of a time when my little sister, at the beginning of the covid lockdown, finished her quarantine, and to celebrate my family drove out of town to a drive thru McDonalds and ate it in the car park. At the time we laughed about how silly and simple it was, but as I sat there eating rapidly cooling fries, I just thought it was wonderful, I saw this version of my family "In the park".

The in the park sections are by far my favourite.

So much of modern day feels like a massive battle, and this book realigned me. The 'smallest' of things, are equally as big. Theres a sacred rituality in the pattern of the profane. I just love it.

This is a curiosity of a novel- hard to categorise; in some senses it feels like a series of photographic snapshots of contemporary city life.

Asya and Manu are two people from different countries and cultures who find themselves living together in an unnamed city.
Life is viewed as 'outsiders' /non-natives.

Asya studied anthropology and as a film maker wants to capture life within a local park- the rituals, rules, traditions. 'Things may be arbitrary or essential but they are rules to a game nonetheless, one which gives an illusion of harmony and permanence.'

As a young couple, they recognise that they 'are only playing out their adulthoods rather than committing to them' They observe the life around them trying to establish their own sense of family as their own relatives live faraway and communication is limited. With a small group friends, they sense their isolation in a 'foreign ' community but patterns are established to give structure and meaning to their daily existence. The search for an apartment of their own to purchase gives rise to what it means to have your' own home' and the obsession of this being a sign of success in adulthood .

Ayşegűl Savas has created a familiar world within in wider world - the minutiae of daily rhythms and friendships and the search for belonging and making your own roots- told through a series of short chapters/pieces of prose. There is something hypnotic about this book that pulls you in to Asya and Manu's life and as a reader living in a city and country that wasn't my birthplace finding your place can be a challenge and this novel captures this perfectly