- ISBN: 978-9358111019
- Genre: Drama / Contemporary Fiction
- Price: INR 349/-
Lost Edges by Salini Vineeth
Lost Edges by Salini Vineeth is the story of a couple, Ravi and Geetanjali as they navigate through their marriage. The story takes place in a decade after their marriage and captures the ups and downs of their marriage beautifully.
Salini Vineeth is a fiction writer and travel blogger based out in Bangalore, India. Her latest book is Magic Square - an English Novella. She is an engineering graduate from BITS Pilani, Goa. She later completed her MTech from IIT-Bangalore. While working as an electronics engineer, Salini started her travel website Pick, Pack, Go in 2014.
Having read her work previously, I was kind of prepared for Lost Edges. However, the author that she is, Vineeth blew me away with the treatment of this story. Her knack for dealing with relationships, talking about their messier aspects while continuing to retain their beauty shines through the book.
In the beginning, we are told how their marriage is on the verge of breakdown and that they are struggling to keep it afloat. The rest of the story talks about all that both of them do, to make this marriage work.
What makes this book unique is that it talks about what happens after the regular ‘happily ever after’ that most romance novels depict.
This book talks about the harsh realities of marriage. Marriage is no cakewalk. Like any other relationship in our life, this needs effort. Or to put it correctly, continuous effort. We are constantly evolving as individuals which means our partners will also be evolving. Things change and so do people.
What is important is to what extent are we willing to go to make our relationships, or in this case, a marriage work. This book talks about those extents.
Vineeth deals with varied topics with extreme sensitivity including mental health, job loss, and unemployment. She also touches briefly on other aspects of a marriage which include social events, peer pressure, and other external factors that can also impact a marriage adversely.
Lost Edges is about love and respect. At the same time, it is also about ambition, ego, trauma, and reconciliation.
What we do not heal, comes back to haunt us.
In Lost Edges, you see multiple instances of this quote coming true. We can expect our partners to be our friends, agony aunts, sounding boards, and a million other things. But it is unfair to expect them to be our therapists. This is a truth endorsed by Salini Vineeth through her strong narrative in this story.
Coming to the characters, Ravi and Geetanjali, have exquisite character arcs carved out meticulously with a lot of layers. As a reader, one can not only relate but also see various extensions of them in people around us. The interesting part is how Salini has managed to not only work on the primary characters of the book but also create equally engaging secondary characters who have their own unique journeys in the book.
For a book that deals with loss, death, trauma, healing, and other such heavy topics, the writing is simple and lucid.
Vineeth allows the reader to fully grasp what’s happening and let the words impact the reader’s psyche. The narrative is slow with many pauses as is needed for a story like this. The pauses or the slowness of the narrative do not impact the reading experience adversely at all. On the contrary, they add to the reading experiences. The pauses are never uncomfortable. Every time a character pauses to look back at life or think something, the reader is pushed to do so too.
The book does not have a concrete ending, so to speak which may leave the reader feeling confused.
Closure is something we all seem to look for and seldom get in life. Perhaps this book is one of those things where closure is what we look for but is not within our reach. The open-ended ending leaves a lot of food for thought for a reader and maybe, does hint at a sequel.
In Indian marriages, women often do heavy weightlifting in terms of social responsibilities, bearing children, juggling a home and career, maintaining familial relationships, etc. This impacts their well-being in multiple ways. The fatigue that sets in with this constant juggling for years is indescribable. Still, Lost Edges captures this emotion well.
Vineeth also talks about the façade of bravery we are all forced to display while there are times when all that we want to do is, scream ‘I quit!’ at the top of our voices, curl up, and cry our hearts out. With this book, she quietly whispers,’ It's okay!’