Journal Entry 1 by indygo88 from Lafayette, Indiana USA on Saturday, January 29, 2011

"In New York City, a girl called Leonora vanishes without a trace. Years earlier and miles upstate, Goldie, a wild, negligent mother, searches for a man to help raise her precocious son, Paul, who later discovers that the only way to save his soul is to run away. As the narrative moves back and forth in time, we find deeper interconnections between these stories and growing clues about Leonora -- this missing girl whose face looks out from telephone poles and billboards -- whom one character will give anything to save.

The Sweet Relief of Missing Children is a suspenseful novel about the power of running and the desire for reinvention. It explores the terror and transcendence of our most central experiences: childhood, parenthood, sex, love."

Received through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. 

Journal Entry 2 by indygo88 at Lafayette, Indiana USA on Saturday, January 29, 2011

This one is hard to review. I wanted to like it. The cover is intriguing. The book description is intriguing. The writing itself -- the structure & beauty of the words -- is quite good. But the overall structure & attempt to understand this book just put me off. The writing style reminded me a bit of Nicole Krauss -- beautiful, almost poetic writing, with a lot of unwritten & underlying meaning behind the words -- but it lacked so much as well. I had trouble keeping track of the different characters. I had trouble orienting myself in the story's timeline. It took me quite a while to soldier on through this book because the storyline didn't engage me enough to want to sit down and read a big chunk at once. And then once I'd get back to it, I'd be confused all over again because of the aforementioned troubles. I think the LibraryThing reviewers who have posted before me have accurately nailed it with their reviews & have said it better than I can. If Braunstein could narrow down her plot, I think she would be much more well-received with this debut novel.