DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What do you think of Pax’s decision at the end of the novel? Do you think his actions will actually bring Leonora’s family closure?
2. Discuss the title The Sweet Relief of Missing Children. Whose relief does the title refer to? The children’s? The parents’?
3. Why does Paul want a new name? What does a new name symbolize? How is his quest for a new name linked with his mother’s identity? When he becomes Pax, is he transformed?
4. What role does Leonora play in the novel? How does her story frame the lives of the other characters? Leonora is clearly a missing child referred to in the title—who or what are the other characters missing?
5. Why do you think Sam marries Judith? Is his decision connected to his mother’s death?
6. Compare Grace and Judith. What does the novel suggest about mother-daughter relationships?
7. Many of the decisions the characters make are selfish or difficult to understand. Do they remain sympathetic? Braunstein has said that she worked as a therapist while writing this novel. How might that experience have influenced the way her characters are portrayed?
8. A central theme of the novel is the thin boundary between innocence and experience, childhood and adulthood. What are some examples of this dichotomy?
9. What is the role of the family throughout the novel? What does the novel reveal about the evolving nature of family?
More Praise for
THE SWEET RELIEF
OF MISSING
CHILDREN
“An unflinching probe into the frailty of children’s dreams and desires. . . . [A] brave and daring book. . . . Highly original and a superb work of fiction.”
—Portland Press Herald
“Artfully executed, with the precise touch of a writer whose power lies not in any spectacularly plotted storyline but in the careful orchestration of many rich details. . . . An undercurrent of necessary humor keeps Sweet Relief’s pages free of melodrama, while subtly asserting the absurdity of life.”
—Daphne Kalotay, Tottenville Review
“Everywhere . . . there is desire. Braunstein doesn’t shy away from tunneling into her characters’ most secret shames and obsessions, and her talent lies in her ability to depict them as at once unique and banal. . . . Ultimately—almost improbably—we are left with a shimmer of hope. . . . We’re reminded that what trapped means for one person is freedom to someone else. And that freedom itself may be a kind of trap. There is beauty in these sympathies, even if they’re not the easy ones; there is sad, sweet relief and the poignant, loose dumbness of life. Braunstein presents it here beautifully, unsparingly, and true.”
—Provincetown Arts
“Sarah Braunstein has written a startling and darkly beautiful first novel. Her characters are so vivid, so perfectly drawn, that I doubt you will ever forget them. Braunstein’s talent is enormous.”
—Danielle Trussoni, author of Angelology
“How to describe a book this beautiful, and this devastating? Sarah Braunstein traces love’s strange and manifold forms, and gives voice to the fears and longings we thought unspeakable. Such immaculate writing, such fierce clarity of vision: I emerged from her novel feeling shaken, exhilarated, changed.”
—Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Madeline Is Sleeping
“I admire Braunstein’s compassion for her characters. . . . As the novel progresses, the characters encounter one another in surprising ways, and their separate stories come together like pieces of broken glass from an object that can never be reconstructed.”
—Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River
“Sarah Braunstein has created a dazzling novel. Luminous and precise, each scene is cast in a hyperreal glare, as the story rushes to an unexpected yet thrilling conclusion. I love this book so much, I hated to reach the final page.”
—Malena Watrous, author of If You Follow Me
Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Braunstein
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First published as a Norton paperback 2011
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this
book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
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Book design by Chris Welch
Production manager: Anna Oler
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Braunstein, Sarah, 1976–
The sweet relief of missing children / Sarah Braunstein. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-393-07659-2 (hardcover)
1. Missing children—Fiction. 2. Runaways—Fiction.
3. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.R3895S94 2011
813’.6—dc22
2010037720
ISBN 978-0-393-34075-4 pbk.
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