In Pursuit of Balance, A Novel

New York: Optyon Books, 2000. Bright, clean, square, tight, unmarked copy. Sharp corners. No owner's name or bookplate. No remainder mark. Not a book club edition. Not price clipped (24.95). Original blue cloth. From the Publisher: "This debut novel is a dynamic take on Repression, Love, Uprooting, Emigration and Re-Adjustment rendered with the insight of a well-unformed author, and populated with unique and vibrant characters. Their joys and pains, successes and defeats, take the reader along the last three decades of the 20th century, and places and circumstances that the majority would never have a chance to personally behold. A strong voice rich with metaphors and symbolism sustain ideally this multi-layered story. In Pursuit of Balance, relates the intertwined stories of Norma Mann, a physician and widowed mother of two young children, and Tibor Rozsavolgyi, an auto-mechanic who is single. They don't have much in common aside from battling their personal misfortunes amidst the deepening dictatorship in Communist Romania of the early 1970's, where people are reduced to equally repressed subjects, and the difference in education is what sets apart classes in an ostensibly classless system. Unpredictable and unusual happenings propel the two into a passionate relationship burdened by predicaments. Their lives follow a roller-coaster of love and separation. Nora takes her fate in her own hands, when daringly she brakes away and immigrates to the United States. To overcome the tribulations of uprooting and re-adjustment to everything new-customs, language, professional hardship-she shows a perseverance exceeding any imagination. The comfort of friendships, the challenges of raising children, and not in the least the ability to see the bright side of a tough life sustain both her and Tibor, who grows quite remarkably in his own way. Family tragedies render their success more than bitter at times, while their separate lives on different continents provide a varied and intriguing framework. Love transcends families and generations. Characters, whose actions unnerve at times, but mostly earn the readers' cheering respect, act out their differences, emotions and moral choices. As the title suggests, the pursuit of balance goes on, even as the story ends, thus gaining a quality of foreverness." . First Printing of the First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine condition/Near Fine dust jacket. 8vo. 435pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.