Review & #Giveaway – Lost Path to Solitude by Maria Elena Sandovici @SandoviciME #LoneStarLit @KristineHall
LOST PATH TO SOLITUDE
(A Follow-Up to Dogs With Bagels)
by Maria Elena Sandovici
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Date of Publication: February 12, 2016
# of pages: 315
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Once you leave home, can you ever return? Two characters, mother and daughter, contemplate this question in Lost Path to Solitude. Twenty-five years after leaving Romania in order to follow the man she loves to New York, Maria Pop still struggles with accepting her decision. She is determined to go back and recapture the poetry and joy of life in Bucharest, even at the expense of risking her marriage. Meanwhile, her daughter, Liliana, second-guesses her own choice of moving to a small town in Southeast Texas, ironically called Solitude, where she finds herself lonely, bored, and nostalgic for the fast pace of life in New York City. Facing the claustrophobic social climate of a town that goes to bed early, as well as the constrictions of her emerging academic career, Liliana longs for something that would give her existence meaning. The parallel soul-searching and the frustration they experience does little to bring mother and daughter closer. Instead, as each struggles with finding her own place in the world, they become increasingly critical of each other. Will their relationship survive the growing pains they each must suffer in their quest for self-fulfillment?
This was a hard book for me to get through. It is a follow up book, but I don’t think you have to read the first book to read this one, but it might shed more lights on the characters and their outlook on life.
None of the characters resonated with me, Maria (the mother) was very self absorbed and hard to like, perhaps it was her Romanian upbringing. Lilli had her own issues and was seeking her happiness but perhaps going about it the wrong way (but then how does anyone learn if they don’t do things the wrong way?!) It seemed like the men, Alex and Victor, were the only sane ones…but they had their own battles to fight as well.
Despite my feelings about the characters, the book is a look into most families and the dysfunction that you will find between parents and their children. Each character does learn something about themselves, but mostly Maria and Lilli. I am not sure that anything Maria learned really stuck with her until maybe the end. It still seemed like she was being catered to by her husband, but perhaps that is what made him happy.
I did get tired of all the F* bombs dropped in the book. I will say this about any book that I read, find another word! Some will say that it is because the characters live in NY and that is common there. It may be, but that doesn’t mean you have to use that one word over and over again.
We give this 3 paws up.
Maria Elena Sandovici moved to Texas on a Greyhound bus in the summer of 2005. It would be the beginning of a great adventure. Born in Bucharest, Romania, a place she loves and where she returns often, she’d spend the requisite time in Manhattan to call herself a New Yorker, but also to know she was looking for something else. Her debut novel, Dogs with Bagels, is very much a New York story: the story of an immigrant family forging new identities for themselves in the city that never sleeps.
Her second novel, Stray Dogs and Lonely Beaches, is the story of a young woman traveling the world in search of herself. This theme persists in Lost Path to Solitude, her third novel, in which characters suffering an identity crisis are caught in a search for the ideal place to call home. Three locales dominate the story: New York City, Bucharest, and an imaginary, caricaturized town in Southeast Texas, called Solitude.
In addition to writing fiction, Maria Elena Sandovici paints every day. She has a studio at Hardy and Nance Studios in Houston, and also shows her daily watercolors on her blog, Have Watercolors Will Travel, accompanied by essays about whatever inspires or obsesses her at any given moment.
To support her art and writing, she teaches Political Science at Lamar University. She is also the well-behaved human of a feisty little dog.
Her favorite places in Texas are Houston and Galveston.
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GIVEAWAY!
TWO WINNERS EACH RECEIVE COPIES OF BOTH DOGS WITH BAGELS & LOST PATH TO SOLITUDE
May 23 – June 1, 2016
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Check out the other great blogs on the tour!
5/23 Missus Gonzo – Review
5/24 It’s a Jenn World – Author Interview #1
5/25 Country Girl Bookaholic – Promo
5/26 Forgotten Winds — Review
5/27 Texas Book Lover – Guest Post #1
5/28 My Book Fix Blog – Excerpt
5/29 Hall Ways Blog – Review
5/30 The Page Unbound – Author Interview #2
5/31 StoreyBook Reviews – Review
6/1 A Novel Reality – Guest Post #2
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Maria Elena Sandovici
When it comes to swearing, I think the English language is a bit limited. Curse words in all other languages I speak are much more colorful, creative, and, well… gross. English is rather tame. And New Yorkers prefer the f-word. It is indeed, overused, to the point where it doesn’t even mean anything and becomes a filler. This happens to a lot of words. Sometimes they become trendy and overused. I talk about these things in my American Government class when I teach Cohen v. California (1971), where the Supreme Court defends the f-word. It’s one of my favorite SC decisions, as it deals with language and the emotions it converys. Anyway, I love words and talking about language is one of my favorite things.
StoreyBook Reviews
I know many people across the board and it would be one thing to use many different words, but to use the same word over and over again?
Donna Birdwell
Hmmm. Maybe you don’t know the same refined people I know – educated, eloquent, well practiced in the use of all the words. ALL the words. 🙂
Maria Elena Sandovici
Thank you for the honest review, and thanks everyone for commenting! I love that different people have different reactions to the book! I sometimes want to shake my characters too! It’s one of my favorite things about writing, when the characters take on a life of their own and do their own thing with or without my approval. 😉
StoreyBook Reviews
That is the great thing about all the books in the world, we don’t have to all like the same ones!
Callie Summerlin
Oh, I disagree. I really fell in love with all of the characters in the first book. I needed to know what happened with them, and I was so thrilled to read the sequel. I think I most related to Liliana (in the sequel). In fact, being a young, single professional living in small town Texas, I relate to her frustrations all too well. The love story between Maria and Victor, and the relationship between them and their children – sure it was frustrating, too. But it was real. It’s exactly how things go in life. Imperfectly. And as far as the cursing in English, I’m always charmed by a person who does it well when English isn’t even their first language. It’s kind of the thing that you most desire when acquiring a foreign language. Not cursing, per say, but easily using colloquialisms and cliches, absolutely! I will be revisiting the book in the future, for sure!
Kristine Hall
I’m with you on the F-bombs — Maria seemed too refined to talk like that and it didn’t seem to fit. I think having her swearing in Romanian — or French, even — would have been more believable. But I really liked the book, even though I wanted to shake Maria by the shoulders for most of it. Thanks for the post!