Hope as Deliverance from Sorrow

Throughout the novel, the author uses her complex network of characters and each their relationships to the Golosovsky sisters' disappearance to explore the ways in which hope preserves the spirit in spite of grief, ultimately delivering the individual from sorrow. While Marina, the sisters' mother, and Alla, Lilia's mother, cling to hope most desperately in light of their daughters' disappearances, each parallel woman uses hope as a form of comfort throughout her respective section. Therefore, by the end of the novel, after the reader learns how the crimes have affected each member of the community, the author proves that hope for a new future has also linked them over the course of the year. Sorrow, loss, and grief, then, are not the only common human experiences. Rather, the author illustrates most poignantly through the section "June," that belief in the impossible allows...