Dr J Vijayalakshmi has published her fourth book, a collection of short stories titled “Black: The Book of Unfinished Tales”. It is another attempt made by the author, to disclose the unceasing, unwavering determination of those ordinary people often trapped in the fringes, either societal or personal. Much like her previous works, the author has again made an attempt to show things as they are. The book aims not to instruct, shape or critique, but rather to magnify the essence of the lives of her characters. These stories are peopled by individuals with desires, aspirations, frustrations, fear, rage, and needs and wants. Thus, this anthology, with its seventeen tales, aims to mirror the contemporary society filled with the aforementioned everyman and everywoman.
Dr Vijayalakshmi’s publication is as varying as her interests. With the novel “Quest for God” (2015), the verse anthology “Poems on the Eternal God” (2016), and her doctoral thesis entitled “A Postmodernist Critique of the Select Works of Amitav Ghosh” (2017), Dr Vijayalakshmi has revealed herself as a consistent writer with a flair for the real, the mundane and the ordinary. Drawing inspiration from the daily, the lives of everyman and everywoman, this author wants to represent the inner lives of the most ordinary people and their quests to be as is.
