It follows Anna and Tom, an east Berlin creative couple (though you don’t need to squint very hard for Kreuzberg to stand in for Clapton) who live an aesthetically pleasing but ultimately shallow life.
Their apartment is full of things that would make an ELC go weak at the knees: a double butler’s sink in the kitchen, salvaged school chairs, a thriving fiddle leaf fig tree.
But without any direct speech the book reads as one long list, and the endless catalogue of the couple’s Danish furniture and Vietnamese steel knives and handmade ceramics becomes exhaustive.
They wear carpenter’s trousers and Gore-tex to Columbia Road Flower Market, have weirdly strong opinions about tomato varieties and enjoy fiery debates about which Zone 2 pub serves the best Guinness.
Their friendships with fellow digital nomads grow transient as gentrification ramps up and the young creatives who priced out the locals are in turn priced out by tech bros.
