A modest and homespun portrait of domesticity that explores, to immensely touching effect, the quiet sorrow of a parent abandoned by her child ... The novel’s heartbreaking ending is fringed with consolations. Ms. Boyt has written her novel with the honesty and kindness that a character like Ruth deserves.
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 ... it’s outrageous, really, how engrossing this novel can be even when its two main characters defy narrative convention and bask in their contentment ... Perhaps this isn’t what we need out of every book that depicts parents, a hit of rapture so potent that we might overdose. But Boyt, who has probably experienced her own share of family drama—she’s the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud, one of his 14 acknowledged children from at least six women—doesn’t subscribe to the notion that it all comes out in the wash. Regret and joy are an indivisible duo for any mother or father, and Boyt wisely mixes them into a beautifully humane chronicle. With this exquisite devotional of a novel, she has turned the ability to find contentment in the muck of parenthood into a courageous art form.
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 ... Between the targets that keep moving and the care that keeps misfiring, the equation of care in Boyt’s novel doesn’t come out even. No one gets exactly what they need—perhaps least of all Eleanor, who refuses Ruth’s, and then Lily’s, attempts at love.
Boyt...is very good on addiction and the toll it exacts on family. A lack of lurid scenes detailing Eleanor’s habit and highs is a sound move, unusual when it comes to drug writing ... More shaky is Boyt’s take on Ruth’s relationship with Eleanor’s daughter ... Still, Boyt’s usual dark humour cuts through, giving Ruth a wonderfully sharp edge. And for the most part it’s a moving novel.
Always witty and unexpected...she has a clear perception of the passion, pain and particularities of female existence ... The novel’s ending is unexpectedly positive. Who would have thought that a story about drug addiction and self-destruction would leave its reader feeling optimistic?
...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 ... Rarely have I so viscerally ached with a character, and yet Boyt’s wit beams shafts of light through the cracks of pain.
...an acute, enormously moving study of familial love, and how the bonds between a mother and child can rupture, sometimes inexplicably ... Love is commonly depicted in extremes, whether romantic, destructive or primal. Boyt offers a more measured picture, showing how, even with the greatest of intentions, love can simply misfire.
...a disarmingly droll tragicomedy about imperfect motherhood and fractured families, generational trauma and the scars of addiction. Unexpected humor, subtle but honest, percolates through the matter-of-fact voice of its engaging narrator and main character ... The quotidian story that unspools proves engrossing thanks to Ruth’s stream-of-consciousness musing and the occasional surprising revelation ... she proves herself a perceptive writer who invites readers in with a singular voice that both upends convention and cuts to the heart of the matter.
