Loved and Missed - Susie Boyt

I expected this to be a wrenching story, but it is much more poignant then painful. Although the facts of the characters lives point to pain...Ruth a single mother to a daughter Eleanor, who becomes a drug addict, and Lily, Eleanor's daughter who is raised by Ruth because of Eleanor's addiction...in Boyt's telling there remains a flicker of light if you try for goodness. A quick, moving, and thoughtful journey into the love of mothers and daughters, the value of friends, and ties that bind and unbind.