Review of The Book of Everlasting Things by Aanchal Malhotra

*The Book of Everlasting Things* by Aanchal Malhotra (2022). Published by Harper Collins India.

There are some books one just finds after wandering through the library for a hot minute, and The Book of Everlasting Things is one of those books I had never heard of but randomly picked up one day after pondering my way through the library.

That trip was a fruitful one for me as I ended up picking up quite a few books that I did enjoy in the long run, and the trip I took directly after this one wasn’t as fruitful, which sucked.

Although this book was released in 2022, towards the end of the year, for some reason it was in the new fiction section.

What compelled me about this one is that I recognized the name of the author as one that was distinctly South Asian, which implied to me I needed to read the synopsis of this book.

And when I saw it was a Partition love story that never truly gets its feet going because of the nature of Partition and the brutal barriers between people that happened during that time, I knew I had to read it.

And man, I ended up crying when I finished this book. What a truly sad but warming journey about the nature of first love and how some things and people we never truly forget.

Onwards with the review!

Samir and Firdaus are love at first sight when they spot each other in the streets of Lahore, but Partition has other plans.

The Book of Everlasting things is loaded with important background information and details throughout its narrative, but we begin with the story of the perfumers in Lahore that Samir finds himself born into. His sweet uncle, his father’s brother, was sent off in World War I to fight for the British and was suspected to be dead for the longest while.

When he randomly shows up on the family doorstep, it kickstarts the family legacy of owning a perfume shop, as his uncle has come back with the knowledge of acute perfumery and what sells on the market. Samir, when he is born, is said to be the heir of the family nose, as he possesses the great ability to pick out scents.

But when he spots the gorgeous eyes of Firdaus Khan, the daughter of a calligrapher, it’s love at first sight. The two continue to see each other throughout the years, becoming each other’s first loves, and it lowkey is expected that they will end up married.

But then the Partition of India occurs, which leads to a devastating revelation: Samir is Hindu and Firdaus is Muslim. That means they could never be together as tensions rise between the two religious groups.

The biggest thing to happen then is one night, Samir’s family’s home is burned down with everyone in it by Muslims. He is left an orphan and there are no survivors. Devastated, he runs through the streets to Firdaus' house, but her parents forbid him from coming inside or seeing her because he is a Hindu and they are Muslim.

Basically they tell him he’s on his own, and Samir ends up finding his way to India as a refugee, while Firdaus’ father thinks about the guilt that he had leaving Samir behind years later.

But before leaving, Samir takes certain scents from the family’s perfumery, including his uncle’s most beloved ones. He packs what he can bring, and through India, he ends up taking a boat to France and starting over through a friend he met while on the boat.

Samir ends up becoming married to a Frenchwoman and has a daughter, while Firdaus gets married back in Pakistan and never leaves her town by the end of the book. She is a Lahori through and through.

Back in France, Samir becomes obsessed with his uncle’s wartime journals, and realizes the extent of his war activities. He was stationed in France and met a woman he loved, and in the French countryside he was trained in the art of perfumes.

Samir’s obsession ultimately destroys his marriage, as his wife feels like he’s being neglectful, and he even loses his job in order to keep reading the journals. He ends up heading to the same place his uncle was trained and becomes a master perfumer there, opening up his own practice in Paris.

The driving force throughout the novel is the nostalgia between the two lovers even as they grow old. Samir, and his wife knows this which ends their marriage, is driven by his love and nostalgia for the past.

His master perfume isn’t for his love of his wife; it comes from the scents that he imagined when he thinks about Firdaus. Even when they have grandkids and experience deaths in the family, the two lovers never truly forgot about each other.

Samir ends up training his English granddaughter, who he realizes has the nose he himself had. Firdaus’ grandson, Samir, begins to unravel the secrets behind his grandmother’s past and seeks to find the original Samir.

He finds out through a man that ended up at Samir’s perfume shop in Paris that he’s still alive and keeps going, but the two will never be reunited. Firdaus becomes sick and dies, and her grandson takes her final letter to Paris to show Samir.

He reads it and then passes away that night, ending the novel with the implication that maybe their devotion will continue through their grandkids.

Overall Thoughts

Such a gorgeous novel, but I think it had some pacing issues in the middle. When Samir becomes obsessed with the journals it seems like there are about a hundred pages just going into his uncle’s story, which I didn’t care for at the end of the day.

While he was led to France and had a love who passed away there, I felt like we didn’t need the extensive journal entries because that wasn’t the focus of the story at large.

But all in all I thought this was such a delightful novel packed full of stunning details that make you feel like you’re right there with the characters. Definitely a must-read for me.

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