Missing Fay

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