Susie Boyt presents 'Loved and Missed' in conversation with Rumaan Alam

Community Bookstore invites you to join Susie Boyt and Rumaan Alam for a reading and discussion of Boyt's novel Loved and Missed, published last year by New York Review Books. 

In Loved and Missed, Boyt's protagonist, Ruth, believes in and despairs of the curative power of love. Her daughter, Eleanor, who is addicted to drugs, has just had a baby, Lily. Ruth adjusts herself in ways large and small to give to Eleanor what she thinks she may need—nourishment, distance, affection—but all her gifts fall short. After someone dies of an overdose in Eleanor's apartment, Ruth hands her daughter an envelope of cash and takes Lily home with her, and Lily, as she grows, proves a compensation for all of Ruth's past defeats and disappointment. Love without fear is a new feeling for her, almost unrecognizable. Will it last? 

As Hillary Kelly writes for The Atlantic, Boyt's Loved and Missed is "enough to disarm even the most cynical readers...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."

Susie Boyt is the author of seven novels and the memoir My Judy Garland Life, which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize, staged at the Nottingham Playhouse, and serialized on BBC Radio 4. She has written about art, life, and fashion for the Financial Times for many years and recently edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories by Henry James.

Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and adapted into a major motion picture.

This event is free and open to the public.