Publishers Weekly
07/31/2023
British writer Boyt delivers a story of filial estrangement in her mordant and touching U.S. debut. The nonlinear narrative opens roughly 15 years ago with Ruth, a sixth-form teacher and single mother, hosting three friends in her London flat. One friend asks about Ruth’s daughter, Eleanor, who left home several years earlier as a teen and is addicted to heroin. Ruth is raising Eleanor’s toddler, Lily, who she feels has “compensated” her for losing her relationship with Eleanor. In a flashback, one of many poignant and sadly funny scenes, Ruth describes meeting Lily’s “cavern-faced” father during a Christmas picnic. Describing how she attempted to inject cheer into the grim scene in the dingy park where they meet, Ruth reflects, “I was smiling all the while, just gently, but in my heart I was thinking this might be the saddest occasion of my life.” Though the attention paid to Ruth’s friends in the opening is a bit misleading, patient readers will appreciate Boyt’s subtle and gradual accrual of details about Ruth’s life, such as the identity and fate of Eleanor’s father. Most powerful, though, is a final chapter from Lily’s point of view as a late teen, as she reckons with her unorthodox upbringing and proves to have picked up Ruth’s generosity and strong sense of observation—but not her sadness. Boyt’s assured effort brims with intelligence and feeling. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
If my tattered and heavily annotated copy of Loved and Missed serves as a harbinger, Boyt has written a 21st-century classic.... Boyt, an acute student of Henry James’s fiction, creates an interlocking series of narratives that is not reducible to the so-called “trauma plot”. No single memory or cluster of memories explains why Ruth feels “smashed up” at the novel’s outset. Instead, Loved and Missed tracks the shambolic emergence of Ruth’s past within the present-tense narrative, and, in the process, raises as many questions as it answers—particularly regarding her relationship with Eleanor.” —Eric Gudas, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Finally, a novel as happy as it is compelling, as beautiful as it is realistic...oh, the lightness and pleasure of Lily and Ruth, their keen companionship over tea and toast, quick trips to the seaside, plimsolls by the door...this is the rare novel that brings equal amounts of solace and joy.” —Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times “Books of the Year”
"It is one of the great charms of the book that, while Boyt is clear-eyed about the compulsions driving Ruth’s caregiving, the descriptions of this caregiving remain so seductive. Much of the novel depicts, with exquisite detail, the prosaic patterns of Ruth and Lily’s home life—quotidian routines between grandmother and granddaughter that are mildly intoxicating." —Jane Hu, The New Yorker
"Enough to disarm even the most cynical readers. Loved and Missed bottles up those fleeting, blissful moments of child-rearing and spritzes each page liberally with their scent. The happiness Boyt describes is so infectious that you want it to last, for your own sake; it isn’t often that readers of literary fiction float along in such placid waters." —Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic
"There is something eminently sensible about this book’s everyday depictions of sadness and courage, something that seems to me quite British, reminiscent of Margaret Drabble and Penelope Lively.... the novel’s heartbreaking ending is fringed with consolations. Ms. Boyt has written her novel with honesty and kindness." —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"Like nearly everything else about this novel, the title does double duty, like a Murphy bed with a secretary desk on its flip side. At first I read it as if it were a gravestone. Only after I finished the book did I see another meaning: 'missed' as a target might be, as if love were a rocket fired from the shoulder." —Joumana Khatib, The New York Times
"The novel conveys the full spectrum of Ruth trying to mother Eleanor in her troubled state from afar….This tale of sorrow and devotion with a layer of hope is for fans of real-world family fiction focusing on intense situations." —Beth Liebman Gibbs, Library Journal
"[Loved and Missed has] an impeccable tone: funny, dark, quiet, sharp." —Maggie Lange, Bustle
"A single mother navigates custody of her granddaughter—and tries to correct mistakes she made the first time around—in this gentle but heart-wrenching story....Readers who are averse to crying in public be warned: You’ll want to sit with this astounding story at home." —Kirkus Starred Review
"UK author Boyt’s first novel to be published in the States covers the themes of parenting, addiction, and forgiveness....This tale of sorrow and devotion with a layer of hope is for fans of real-world family fiction focusing on intense situations." —Library Journal
"British writer Boyt delivers a story of filial estrangement in her mordant and touching U.S. debut…Boyt’s assured effort brims with intelligence and feeling." —Publishers Weekly
“What a beautiful, illuminating and deeply humane novel Susie Boyt has given us—her prose glorious, her characters alive upon the page, their voices and gestures utterly vivid. Loved and Missed, rich like life itself in sorrow, comedy and joy, is a triumph.” —Claire Messud
“Loved and Missed is a story of parental love and human failing that’s more funny than it has any right to be, more heartbreaking than you think you can bear; it's the sort of book you can’t wait to recommend to everyone you know, the sort of book we are lucky to have.” —Rumaan Alam
“Susie Boyt is an extraordinary novelist of the inner life. Loved and Missed is her most masterful, most fearless book yet.” —Joseph O'Neill
“Loved and Missed deftly sidesteps the clichés that often plague stories involving drug abuse, and it conveys the complexities of loving someone who can't love you back with remarkable delicacy.” —Mia Levitin, Financial Times
“This beautiful tale of love, courage and compassion ... captures the pain of estrangement in penetrating, haunting language.... Loved and Missed is a complex, deeply moving novel about frailty and suffering. Despite all the sadness, hope remains.” —Martin Chilton, Independent
“Boyt is both funny ... and poignant ... but never less than impeccably truthful, with a broad, oft breathtaking wisdom.” —Emily Hourican, Irish Independent
“Boyt's novel is compelling—and invites our compassion for those who may not always earn it, but still deserve it.” —Marianka Swain, Daily Telegraph
“Always surprising—unexpected, particular, the thing you didn't know you wanted, but needed more than anything. A tender study of unrequited maternal love redeemed ultimately by the quiet glory of not giving up.” —Tamsin Greig
“Boyt's writing is perceptive and emotionally powerful.” —MSN
“I adored Susie Boyt's novel Loved And Missed, which explores what can happen when, out of the blue, addiction and dereliction arrive to wreck a family. And how goodwill, determination and encouragement can ultimately put things back together again.” —Rev Richard Coles, Daily Mail
Library Journal
08/01/2023
UK author Boyt's first novel to be published in the States covers the themes of parenting, addiction, and forgiveness. Ruth is a teacher, and a single mum to Eleanor. Despite Ruth's devotion, Eleanor is a troubled teen who eventually leaves home due to her drug addiction. Ruth allows her daughter space and waits patiently, until Eleanor becomes pregnant. Once Lily is born, Ruth rescues her new granddaughter from squalor and raises her joyously. The novel conveys the full spectrum of Ruth trying to mother Eleanor in her troubled state from afar, while simultaneously raising Lily. Ruth and Lily have the tightest bond; it's the two of them against the world. Lily is the missing link for Ruth, as she has consistently been left by so many others in her life. Ruth is kind and compassionate with both of her "daughters," and she has a tight group of girlfriends who always have her back and can help with Lily or come through if a crisis arises with Eleanor. Readers follow Lily as she grows into a strong young woman. VERDICT Boyt has been compared to Scottish novelist Ali Smith ("Seasonal Quartet"). This tale of sorrow and devotion with a layer of hope is for fans of real-world family fiction focusing on intense situations.—Beth Liebman Gibbs
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-06-21
A single mother navigates custody of her granddaughter—and tries to correct mistakes she made the first time around—in this gentle but heart-wrenching story.
When London schoolteacher Ruth learns that her daughter, Eleanor, is pregnant, the two are sharing a meager Christmas dinner on a park bench. Eleanor is years into debilitating addiction, living on and off the streets with her baby's father, Ben, but Ruth pushes past Eleanor's resistance to offer help when Lily is born—holding vigil as the newborn goes through withdrawal in the hospital, taking control of the baptism as Eleanor and Ben keep wandering off, regularly stopping by their apartment to make sure they’re eating. When Ruth finds an unresponsive person in Eleanor’s apartment—ostensibly an overdose—she flees with Lily, anticipating a fight for custody that never comes. The years pass swiftly, almost perfunctorily, as Lily grows into a kind, strong-willed, and precocious child, “someone who knows life is a serious business, perhaps a few years before she might,” as Ruth's friend describes her. The pacing matches Ruth’s own matter-of-factness: Her outsize shame leaves little berth for wallowing, and her self-deprecating wit resists maudlin sentimentality. (The greatest source of comic relief comes from Jean Reynolds, Ruth’s co-worker, whose brashness and loyalty make her impossible not to love.) Through intimate first-person narration, Ruth balances the pain of losing a daughter against the hope of a second chance. Her relationship with Lily brings a cautious joy. Ruth can’t look at the girl without seeing the trail of maternal pain that originated with her own mother, who drank disinfectant after Ruth’s father left, and led to Lily’s miraculous birth. Love can go awry—see the double meaning of the title, which Lily discovers on a tombstone: “It kind of sounds like the person tried to be loving but…the aim was wrong”—but can that misdirection be righted? Though Lily isn’t immune from trauma—this is clear when her perspective abruptly takes over in the final third of the book—she is propped up by the strength of Ruth’s devotion.
Readers who are averse to crying in public be warned: You’ll want to sit with this astounding story at home.
