I finished The Anthropologists, Ayşegül Savaş’s quiet novel about a couple trying to build a life in a city that never quite feels like home, a few weeks ago. Ever since, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Asya and Manu.

Which felt strange, because if someone asked me what actually happens in the novel, I’d struggle to answer. They spend months looking for an apartment, cook dinner, ride their bikes and stop for coffee. Although proudly describe bed rotting as one of their favourite activities, they worry about work, money and where they belong. They look after an elderly neighbour called Tereza, spend evenings with Ravi and their friends, talking about things that, on the surface, seem wonderfully ordinary.

None of it sounds particularly remarkable.

Yet I closed the book feeling as though I’d witnessed one of the most beautiful relationships I’d come across in fiction. For days afterwards, I kept asking myself why.

It wasn’t because Asya and Manu were perfect. They weren’t. They misunderstood each other, worried about the future and carried the same uncertainty that most of us do. Nor was it because they were unusually romantic. There were no sweeping declarations of love or dramatic moments demanding to be remembered.

The novel seemed interested in something quieter: the life two people slowly build together.

One sentence kept returning to me.

“We agreed that Tereza was a little odd and that she was one of us.”

It’s such a small sentence that it’s easy to pass over. But I don’t think the novel works unless you stop there for a moment. Tereza isn’t family. She isn’t even particularly close to them when we first meet her. Yet, without ceremony, she becomes one of us. Their relationship never feels like a world built exclusively for two people. Instead, it quietly expands, making room for neighbours, friends and people who simply need somewhere to belong.

Later, Asya writes that they had “no spare sets of plates or matching glasses, but we had plenty of discussion in our lives.”

Not because it says anything profound about dinner parties, but because it quietly reveals the kind of home they’re building. The home which is not an impressive one or a perfectly curated one. Just one where conversation matters more than furniture, and people matter more than appearances.

Somewhere between those two passages, I realised the novel hadn’t taught me something new. It had simply given me the language for something I’d been noticing without fully understanding.

Ravi isn’t simply another character in the novel. His presence tells us something about Asya and Manu’s relationship. Their life doesn’t become smaller because they’re together; it becomes larger. Tereza becomes “one of us.” Ravi becomes part of the rhythm of their evenings. Friends come and go, conversations stretch long into the night, and their relationship never seems to close a door behind it.

It quietly leaves another chair at the table.

Watching my friends Isha and Vishal over the years, I realised they’d built the same kind of life.

I’ve known them for years, but until I read The Anthropologists, I don’t think I’d ever understood what it was that I admired about them. If someone asked me to describe their relationship, I’d probably struggle—not because there’s nothing to say, but because almost everything worth saying sounds painfully ordinary.

Isha cooks. Vishal clears up afterwards. They eat dinner together most evenings. They plan their future together, whether that’s buying a house in India or deciding where life might take them next or buying groceries or planning the next vacation. Some weekends they stay home with a bottle of wine, watching television or scrolling through TikTok together. Other weekends they go camping because Isha happened to find a tent on Facebook Marketplace.

Together, they’ve built a life.

What I’ve admired most about them isn’t simply the relationship they’ve built with each other, but the world they’ve built around it.

When I first moved to this country, they quietly became part of the life I was trying to build here. They showed me around, answered questions I didn’t even know I had and somehow made a new country feel a little less unfamiliar.

Every time I visit, it’s as though they’ve been expecting me. The guest room is already made. There’s usually a bottle of wine or a few beers because they know I’ll probably want one after work. My favourite snacks have somehow appeared in the cupboards. They’ve already decided what special dinner we’ll cook together that evening, yet none of it feels rigid. If I’d rather go for a drive, choose the film or spend the evening talking instead, that’s exactly what we do.

There’s always a plan. But there’s always room to change it.

I don’t think there’s a textbook that teaches two people how to build a shared life. No one tells you how to create a space that belongs equally to both people, or how to slowly develop rituals, habits and even a shared language that didn’t exist before you met.

Watching Isha and Vishal over the years, and later meeting Asya and Manu on the page, quietly changed my idea of what a good partnership looks like. It isn’t simply about how well two people look after one another. It’s about the space they create between them—a space eventually large enough for other people to enter.

I’ve never felt like an outsider in Isha and Vishal’s life. Like Ravi, I slowly stopped being Isha’s friend or Vishal’s friend.

I simply became both of theirs.

Every now and then, a book comes along that doesn’t leave you thinking only about its characters. It sends you back into your own life. The Anthropologists did that for me. Long after I closed it, I found myself noticing people I’d known for years in an entirely different way.

For a long time, I thought books introduced us to lives we would never live. Now I think the very best books do something much quieter.

They return us to our own lives with sharper eyes.

The Anthropologists didn’t teach me what love looks like. It simply helped me recognise the kind of love I’d already been lucky enough to witness.

Ever since, I’ve found myself wondering how many extraordinary things we overlook simply because they happen every day—and how many of us have already been invited into lives we don’t yet know to be grateful for.