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?

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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
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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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