My Goodreads and Amazon review of The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas (Rated 3) – Bumpless. The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas is a quiet book about the small pleasures of a self-contained couple. Asya and her partner Manu, each from different countries and living in yet a third country, are outsiders content to dwell inside their own relationship. They’ve even invented a tribal name and private language. Although they work — she as a documentary film maker, he at an unspecified nonprofit — there’s no passion behind their labors. Friends are satellites, one of whom orbits closely, but the others are props in the twosome’s routines. A plot, if one can be said to exist, is their search for a new apartment. They struggle to find one they like because they are too comfortable to imagine inhabiting a different space. Like anthropologists, Asya and Manu observe and occasionally join the action, but nothing penetrates their insular cocoon. Savas will convince some readers that a life lived this way, without conflict and drama, but also minus joy and excitement, is enough. It’s a reassuring message in a hectic world. Yet I found myself seeking more. A character-driven novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page) , I nevertheless choose to invest my characters’ lives with significant events and challenges. Savas’s flat plain felt sad and empty. I would have preferred more bumps.
The uneventful life of an insular couple
Why writers read: “If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.” – Lord Byron
