Remembering a college lecture on how outside anthropologists would look at many of our day-to-day activities as rituals, Asya looks to build rituals as she’s settling into city life.
This short novel plays out in a series of short moments as she films a documentary in a local park, searches for an apartment, deals with pressure to start a family, handles friendships, and navigates aging relatives living in other countries.
This is a quiet and subtle novel and most parts feel like they’re being recounted later or seen from some distance (as a film?). Yet this doesn’t detract or downplay the joys and struggles and uncomfortable situations are not spared (but also not dwelled upon). Mostly, this is a novel focusing on very mundane aspects of life but it succeeds in showing the ritual.
(And what a great cover with the Torbjørn Rødland photograph!)
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