The Lost Child

'Urgent and vivid … A serious, writerly, self-critical account of what it means to feel that, despite love and hope and good intentions, you have failed as a parent, and that the child you bore (while still eerily, painfully familiar) is lost to you. Which is not the same thing as saying that it is the complete truth. Art can only ever hope to present a version of the truth. And this is what Julie Myerson has done' Daily Telegraph 'An aching, empty-nest memoir: a mother mourning for her uncomplicated little children, now grown, whom she could care for, write about without comeback, love - and control'The Times Myerson's motivation is anything but base. She could have disguised her material in a novel, but she wanted to make sense of reality, to understand the chaos that has taken over her family. She wanted to help others, herself and her son … Any family for whom cannabis has been a wrecker, even if they would not dream of exposing their situation in the same way Myerson has, will be grateful to her for having done so. She may have been rash, but she has also been courageous. She has tried to write honestly about a nightmarish situation and a subject that never seems to get the attention it deserves' Observer 'Yelloly, however ephemeral, fulfils a function - she is a lost girl, one who cannot be revived, from a family ravaged by that Victorian scourge, consumption. And Myerson's real, parallel lament is for a child who falls victim to our modern version of consumption - the slow ruination of a much-loved child through drugs … gripping' Financial Times 'A campaigning book … If the question is whether a woman has a right to tell a story that is also, actually, her own - a book reviewer can only say yes. And add that anyone who reads it will struggle not to be profoundly moved' Independent

Julie Myerson is the author of seven novels, including the bestselling Something Might Happen, and two works of non-fiction, including Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived In Our House, which was dramatised on BBC Radio 4. Her latest novel Out of Breath was published by Cape in February 2008. She lives in London and Suffolk with her husband and teenage children.