BookLife Review: Loved and Missed, by Susie Boyt
Mother-daughter, granddaughter, drug addiction, single parent, raising a grandchild.
In Loved and Missed, British author Susie Boyt delivers a painful and loving portrait of motherhood gone awry in too many ways. Ruth is estranged from her drug-addicted daughter, Eleanor, and maneuvers to secure and raise Eleanor’s accidental daughter, Lily. Ruth herself is a lonely only child of a single mother.
Ruth adores Eleanor and every day mourns Eleanor’s fate and addiction, cyclically questioning and probing her own role and missteps in raising Eleanor in an attempt to locate the cause of Eleanor’s fall into addiction. She offers ongoing love and support to Eleanor, circling around in futile attempts to provide food and money, and ignores teh small thefts that accompany Eleanor’s occasional visits.
When Eleanor becomes pregnant, Ruth sees her opportunity for redemption. She swoops in to care for baby Lily and persuades Eleanor to allow her to raise the baby. Eleanor is deep in her addiction and illness and does not put up a fight. Ruth patches together a plan for child care as she continues her work as a part-time teacher, and falls deeply in love with her granddaughter. Ruth continues to navigate the fraught dynamic with Eleanor, and labors to forge a relationship between her daughter and her granddaughter, to minimal avail. Ruth is gifted with a colleague and friend, Jean, who offers ongoing moral support.
In an elucidating scene in the middle of the book, Ruth and Lily stroll through a park-like cemetery where a headstone bears the epigraph Loved and Missed. Ruth muses on its double meaning–the deceased was loved and is missed by those left behind, and that loved ones attempted to love the deceased but their love missed its mark. Ruth lives in a state where she believes the latter meaning best reflects her relationship with Eleanor, and she strives to have the former epitomize her bond with Lily.
When Ruth turns seventy, she grows ill and Lily, barely still a minor, must grow up too soon to become the parent and caregiver, with a hefty assist from Jean. The ending is not tidy and cinematic, but it rings true for the delightful characters that Boyt has brought to life.