The Book of Everlasting Things

Starred review from October 1, 2022

DEBUT New Delhi-born artist and oral historian Malhotra has written extensively about the 1947 Partition of India, including the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize-shortlisted Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided, and she brings that knowledge to her first novel, rendering history in human, often poignant images. One January morning in 1938, Samir Vij, apprentice perfumer and a Hindu, meets Firdaus Khan, calligrapher's apprentice and a Muslim, in his family's ittar (a fragrant essential oil) shop in Lahore. Time passes, and their friendship deepens into love, until they find themselves on opposite sides of the border after Partition. The story glides back and forth in time, through two World Wars and the Partition and the recent past. Secrets are revealed, the intricacies of calligraphy and perfume-making are described, and the consequences of decisions made are recounted. Near the novel's end, Samir sums it up: "It is difficult to forget, but it is even harder to keep remembering." It will be difficult indeed to forget this exquisite story. VERDICT A long and luxurious tale of love, loss, memory, and place, told against a backdrop of tumultuous historical events.--Carolyn M. Mulac

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 10, 2022
At the heart of Indian artist and writer Malhotra’s sweeping debut novel (after the memoir Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided) is an indelible love story between two young apprentices of ancient arts: Samir Vij, a Hindu boy born with an extraordinary sense of smell that equips him for the family perfume business started by his uncle Vivek; and Firdaus Khan, a Muslim girl whose calligrapher father defies custom by teaching her his craft (only boys are expected to work). Spanning over a century, from the early 1900s to 2017, the author focuses her mesmerizing tale on the 1947 Partition and its devastating impact on the city of Lahore, where multicultural families and friends who once lived in harmony are wrenched apart. The budding childhood love story between Samir and Firdaus becomes a forbidden romance when the partition dooms their relationship—which later haunts them throughout their separate lives. Malhotra skillfully interweaves Vivek’s story—a competent young man in the family textile business who goes off to war and returns irrevocably scarred by battle and a personal tragedy—into Samir’s complex trajectory, and beautifully conveys the artistry behind perfumes. What emerges is a transcendent study of the blurring of personal and political, as ordinary people deal with catastrophic historical events. Agent: Rebecca Wearmouth, Peters Fraser & Dunlop.

December 1, 2022
Two lovers navigate their lives as they are split into separate nations. Malhotra's debut novel starts off in pre-Partition Lahore, where Samir Vij, a 10-year-old Hindu boy, inherits his paternal uncle Vivek's olfactory prowess. Much of the plot--spanning 80 years and several cities--is accentuated by this inheritance. The Vij family's perfumery; Samir's love for a young Muslim girl named Firdaus Khan, who's a calligrapher; and the communal riots marred with smoke and blood in the days preceding the 1947 Partition are all deftly described through Samir's nose. Malhotra's prose is sensuous and rich, and the ease with which she conjures a world that no longer exists is impressive. Sometimes the prose gets heavy-handed, though. In the first few pages, when young Samir inhales the smell of tuberose: "All that surrounded him--the river, the legends, the sand, the breeze, the morning light, even his family--dissolved. Everything solid melted into air." This seems too transcendental so early in the novel. Perhaps the hyperbole would have served a purpose later, when tuberose was not just an intoxicating smell, but a memory of the past. While the Partition of India and creation of Pakistan mold the shape of Samir's and Firdaus' lives, the novel is, above all else, a meditation on memory, the preservation of intimate history, loss, and love. The story is teeming with these themes, but the jumps from India to France, from Samir's perspective to Firdaus' and the years skipped in between, feel abrupt and simplistic. Perhaps this is what Malhotra set out to achieve--to create a present so embedded in the past that it doesn't make sense on its own. A quiet and moving portrait of eternal love and remembrance.

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Starred review from November 1, 2022
In 1938, a boy and a girl gaze at each other through a glass cabinet of perfume bottles in the back of a shop. Samir, whose Hindu family owns the perfumery, has a gifted sense of smell and is captivated by the combination of vanilla and rose scents he detects before he sees Firdaus, who has come to the shop with her Muslim family to perfume the paper the family uses for their elaborate calligraphy. From this moment, their lives will intertwine, although in the coming years, Partition will rip their world apart. Samir inherited his gift of smell from his uncle, who started the perfumery after mysteriously vanishing abroad while serving in the Great War. When the violence and chaos of Partition bring personal tragedy to Samir, the young man leaves his home to eventually follow in his uncle's footsteps to France. There he learns more about the secrets his uncle had deeply buried and the true origins of the family business, his obsession with the past leading him further away from the life he tries to build in the present. Meanwhile, Firdaus remains in Lahore, now part of Pakistan, to cut her own path in the wake of regret for how she parted from Samir. Malhotra's debut novel is a majestic, evocative exploration of the persistence of memory and the human connections that transcend even death.

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