Missing Fay - Couverture rigide

"Twenty-five years on from his spectacular debut novel, Ulverton, Thorpe has produced a book that resembles and rivals it... With tremendous flair, Thorpe opens up a vista of present-day middle England." (Peter Kemp Sunday Times, Books of the Year)

"An intricately crafted novel, sharp-eared, current and full of heart." (Guardian, Books of the Year)

"Missing Fay...presents entwined provincial lives with illuminating precision, its prose textured, its structure intricate... He is alert to every English linguistic twitch, every slippery folk-meme. He’s a writer’s writer, and I wish he were a reader’s writer too." (Hilary Mantel Times Literary Supplement)

"Is Thorpe Britain’s most underrated writer? Having just re-read his 1992 classic novel Ulverton, I say he has to be in the running" (John Burnside)

"Thorpe is a master of quiet ironies, of exquisite detail... This is a mysterious, lucent novel, compelling in its tautness, devastating in its wisdom. I hope it wins prizes." (Philip Womack Spectator)

"Not only Britain’s most underrated writer, he is also among the most original... [Missing Fay] is believable, human, sustained by characterisation, nuanced prose and a robust, natural humanity all of its own. Further evidence, as if needed, that Adam Thorpe is a very fine writer indeed. Novelists don’t have to be accomplished poets, yet it clearly helps." (Eileen Battersby Irish Times)

"Missing Fay is a book of lives... Thorpe draws each character with economy, empathy, depth of perception and, notwithstanding the subject matter, great humour... He presents human existence in all its isolation and odd interconnectedness, and he does so with a poet’s eye for language, a short-story writer’s gift for compassion and a novelist’s overarching perspective. He is one of modern English fiction’s standout talents." (Simon Baker Literary Review)

"If the missing girl trope belongs to crime fiction, the ambiguity here makes for a richer and more haunting experience. There are plenty of suspects, and a second read reveals connections you won’t get on the first. The mystery of the missing girl cleverly connects lives that rarely intersect... Thorpe’s teeming free-indirect style interweaves a tapestry of prejudices... This is a clear-sighted work of art. With great empathy it imagines lives which, hidden from each other, are revealed in their common causes to the reader; if Thorpe is right, a better world, while unlikely, is possible." (Luke Brown Financial Times)

"One of those rare writers who can do the magic of completely disappearing and letting his characters...speak for themselves... Thorpe is not a regular fixture on literary prize shortlists. Surely that will change with this engrossing, unforgettable work of wonder." (Melissa Katsoulis The Times)

"Adam Thorpe’s superb new novel will put this gifted novelist back on the map... A tour-de-force of depth and nuance... Missing Fay is superb on many levels... A vivid portrait of a particular locality, a psychological study of overlapping lives, a pitch-perfect piece of ventriloquism...and a sweeping conspectus of contemporary concerns." (Sunday Times)

A Guardian / Sunday Times Book of the Year

A spirited, restless fourteen-year-old, Fay, goes missing from a Lincoln council estate. Is she a runaway, or a victim – another face on a poster gradually fading with time? The story of her last few days before she vanishes is interwoven with the varied lives of six locals – whether aware or unaware of her presence or absence, all touched in life-changing ways.

David is an eco-campaigner on a family holiday on the bleak Lincolnshire coast; Howard, a retired steel worker with some dodgy friends; Cosmina, a Romanian immigrant struggling as a care-home nurse; Sheena, middle-aged and single, running a kiddies’ clothes shop, is sexually entangled with the peculiar Gavin, while dreaming of Paul, up the lane; Mike, the misanthropic owner of the haunted second-hand bookshop, is secretly in love with Cosmina; and Chris, a TV producer become Trappist monk, can’t quite leave the ordinary world behind. All are involuntary witnesses to the lost girl; paths cross, threads touch, connections are made or lost. Is Fay alive or dead? Or somewhere in between?

Adam Thorpe has once again created a cast of brilliant eccentrics bound together by the accident of geography, in a novel of effortlessly elegant prose, forensic observation and resonant power.