Loved and Missed

With her daughter in the throes of drug addiction, a mother takes over the care of her granddaughter-and is transformed by the bond that forms between them-in this warm, sharp-witted, and psychologically acute story of familial love by a praised British novelist.

Ruth is a woman who believes in and despairs of the curative power of love. Her daughter Eleanor is a drug addict who has just had a baby, Lily. Ruth adjusts herself in large ways and small to give to Eleanor what she thinks she may need: nourishment, distance, affection. But all her gifts fall short: what Eleanor wants is only what will mutilate. When Ruth finds a body, the victim of an overdose, in Eleanor's apartment, she gives her a large envelope of cash in exchange for Lily and takes the baby home. She wonders how her friends see her: "Tall, chestnut-haired, despairing? Would they claim in order to be brave I've had to coarsen myself?"

No matter, Lily is a life force, and as she grows, her benevolent presence begins to soften the sharp-edged defeats and disappointments that have menaced Ruth for so long. For a person left by people all her life, love without fear is an almost unrecognizable feeling, and will it last? Loved and Missed is a whip-smart, incisive, and mordantly witty novel about love's gains and missteps. British writer Susie Boyt's seventh novel, and the first to be published in the US, is a triumph.