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Sunday, May 16, 2021

Book Review: The Part I Left with You by Rahul Saini | Contemporary Fiction

    

Book Review

The Part I Left with You by Rahul Saini


Book Review: The Part I Left with You by Rahul Saini | Contemporary Fiction | Dhiraj Sindhi | Indian Book Blogger
The Part I Left with You by Rahul Saini

AuthorRahul Saini

ISBN978-9353451585

GenreContemporary Fiction

Length: 236 Pages

Publication Date30th March 2021

PublisherJuggernaut Books (Sales and Distribution - HarperCollins India)

Cover Design: Amit Malhotra 

Cover Designer: Website: https://www.amit-malhotra.com/ | Instagram: @gul_e_abbasis

Order your copy right now: https://amzn.to/3yhCQug


About the author:

Rahul Saini has a master’s degree in English literature. He is the bestselling author of many novels, including Those Small Lil Things: In Life and Love and Paperback Dreams.


Book Review: The Part I Left with You by Rahul Saini | Contemporary Fiction | Dhiraj Sindhi | Indian Book Blogger
Rahul Saini

Instagram: @writingrahul
Facebook: @rahul.saini.1213
Twitter: @writingrahul
YouTube: Writing Rahul



REVIEW


“Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.” – Slavoj Žižek
“Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.” – Slavoj Žižek


The Part I Left with You by Rahul Saini is a light-hearted, chucklesome and unputdownable contemporary fiction novel that dives deep into the waters of love; while exploring varied opinions on and experiences of love, relationships, break-ups and moving on, it strives to close in on the realities of this ‘ugly and cruel world’. The book narrates the stories of three main characters – one mostly witty, another melancholic, esoteric and the third who is turning over the page she was stuck on for long in order to start afresh.


The narration of this book involves all these three characters’ POVs. It is a fine and balanced mixture of different kind of narrative techniques, including first-person, third-person (limited omniscient) and epistolary style, which in my opinion, completes any piece of literary work because using these literary devices in the non-linear narrative writing keep us readers hooked and emphasizes on little themes of the story and it is what makes a truly gripping novel such as this. Rahul Saini has handily achieved this. On top of everything, the cozy contemporary writing style worked like a charm on me.


“Artists’ lives are just endless struggles and that struggle ends only with their last breaths.” – Rahul Saini
“Artists’ lives are just endless struggles and that struggle ends only with their last breaths.” – Rahul Saini


Talking about the content, each of the 34 chapters seemed to me like a separate short story discussing a distinct subject, idea or viewpoints, or narrating a subplot, backstory or (my favorites from this book) completely different short tales – story within a story – fascinating and magnificent. What I mean to say is that these chapters have something very unique to offer from craziness to drama to dreams to arguments to philosophy to romance to thrill to sorrow…you name it. These all short stories are linked together by these three characters and what they are seeking out.


Having said that, let me briefly introduce you to the characters. Ratna is in love with her favorite author, Ronit Sukhdev. The book opens with this amazing poem titled ‘Not Gibran, On Love’ written by Ratna (honestly, I recorded this poem several times day after day, but like most of you, I hated my recordings, so it only made to one of my best friends), for she is a literature and journalism student and for this fact and a little lie, she gets an opportunity to stay with the love of her life for a few days. While ecstatic Ratna wants Ronit to be a little cheerful if not as much as her, Ronit‘s life has come to a standstill as he hasn’t yet gotten over his break-up with Nitasha. He has completely isolated himself from the world and does not wish to publish his work anymore. It has been a year since the break-up and Nitasha is finally coming to terms with her choice of letting go of her relationship with Ronit and she’s carving the way out with newfound hope.


“To learn an art is an act of meditation. You can’t keep jumping around, running all the time, trying a hundred things, understanding nothing and pretend that you are learning everything.” – Rahul Saini
“To learn an art is an act of meditation. You can’t keep jumping around, running all the time, trying a hundred things, understanding nothing and pretend that you are learning everything.” – Rahul Saini


The best thing about this book is that it has books everywhere. In every alternate chapter, you can find book titles, quotes, bookstores or other bookish stuff. The author has expounded a lot of powerful arguments, opinions and statements on love, life and the world that are worth knowing by heart. I would like to quote a few such lines here. However, it doesn’t make the book downright ‘serious’. Nope. Rahul Saini has totally wrung out the essence of comfort and amiability from the writing style. Ratna’s character is a witty character, for she can turn anything into humour, be it because of her lack of wisdom or her childlike behavior. She’s a humorous character indeed, but not a caricature at all! I loved everything she did and how she behaved around her crush, for whatever reason, because I can’t imagine staying with my crush and not messing up. She made me laugh and some lines made me emotional too.


The primary theme of the book is what the title suggests. While it’s not appropriate to reduce any work to a sentence, it represents an idea that ‘when two people spend a lot of time together, they lose themselves and gain each other’. This is what is happening in the book. Now, I won’t go in-depth regarding this. There are plenty of other subjects discussed and tackled in those individual short stories I talked about, forming minor themes and elements that hold the potential to make a real difference. There are also things that you would want to ignore, which are just characters being themselves.


“If creative people were happy with the world around them, they would never feel the urge to create anything new.” – Rahul Saini
“If creative people were happy with the world around them, they would never feel the urge to create anything new.” – Rahul Saini


Anyway, my favorite take-away from this book are those unforgettable, significant stories/chapters that provide you the food for thought. Some of these are – one on Slavoj Žižek (yeah, I copy-pasted that), another on the mirror phase, and the third titled, ‘The Shark in the Pool’. Apart from that, I liked Ratna’s relationship with her father and the depiction of how differently books are important to the lives of authors and readers. Not eulogizing, but I can’t express my admiration enough for the illustrious writing style that really got me high; I relished it, of course except for a few parts.


Lastly, ‘The Part I Left with You’ is a charming, cozy contemporary book and an absolute page-turner that you would want to read around this time to feel lighter; it has way more tales and joy in store for you than what its synopsis promises. 


“When two people spend a lot of time together, they lose themselves and gain each other.” – Rahul Saini
“When two people spend a lot of time together, they lose themselves and gain each other.” – Rahul Saini


Happy Reading!

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DisclaimerThis review is only intended for initiating discussions. The opinions and views presented in this article are my own and do not reflect anything about the book's author.

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Will see you in the next post. Till then buh-bye. Take Care. Peace. ☮

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