A Review of AND WE REMAINED by ASAD ALI JUNAID
Intricately plotted and written with multiple POV style which imitates legendary William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” this novel chronicles the history of five engineering friends on how they go about in their life in and out of college. The books almost voyeuristically narrates in part-epistolary fashion (using emails) the struggles of characters with love, engineering, life in India and aboard. The author should get full point for acute portrayal of Engineering life in India and life in Ohio, USA.
The strength of the book becomes its weakness because at places multiple narrators are hard to tease out from each other as they tend to lose their distinct voices and start to sound same. (It might be intentional from author as one of the protagonists “Sahir Hassan” writes the story for some of the characters.). Though the book has multiple characters, the story primarily focus on Sahir Hassan as he goes through major arc in term of character development (in love with Wardha – what a unique name) but I feel his struggle at USA has been cut short. Personally, I feel that he got out easily, when I rooted so much for him. Strangely, no major argument happens between this group of friends, so reading this book feels like a listening to couple of close friends talking/chatting away and if you aren’t from the same group, you get the feeling of having left out.
Overall, this book is, as its subtitle says, an absorbing story told differently, tells a funny tale of characters in friendship, love, Engineering college and life struggles in India and abroad in a different way.