'I was in the story, feeling everything. I cared about every character . . . She writes beautifully. It was a total pleasure' Philippa Perry, author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read

Susie Boyt writes with a mordant wit and vivid style which are at their best in Loved and Missed.
When your beloved daughter is lost in the fog of addiction and you make off with her baby in order to save the day, can willpower and a daring creative zeal carry you through ?
Examining the limits, disappointments and excesses of love in all its forms, this marvellously absorbing novel, full of insight and compassion, delights as much as it disturbs.

'She takes the study of love into uncharted territory and every sentence has its depth and pleasure' Linda Grant
'I am so moved: it carries a huge emotional power... I ache for them all. Poignant, witty, lyrical and perceptive' Joan Bakewell

"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" - Independent

"It's an arresting premise for Susie Boyt's thoughtprovoking seventh novel...Boyt's novel is compelling - and invites our compassion for those who may not always earn it, but still deserve it." - The Sunday Telegraph, Novel of the Week

"Boyt is both funny...and poignant...but never less than impeccably truthful, with a broad, oft breathtaking wisdom" - Irish Independent

"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." - Financial Times

"An acute, enormously moving study of familial love, and how the bonds between a mother and child can rupture, sometimes inexplicably." - i

"Boyt's novel is compelling-and invites our compassion for those who may not always earn it, but still deserve it" - Daily Telegraph

"To wrest exquisite prose and engaging narrative out of a tale of pain and sorrow is the achievement of a serious novelist who has blossomed into originality and who deserves a wide audience" - Spectator

"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." - Daily Mail

"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" - Atlantic