Missing Fay
by Adam Thorpe
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Pub Date Jun 01 2017 | Archive Date Jul 24 2018
Random House UK, Vintage Publishing | Jonathan Cape
Description
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.
Advance Praise
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 vibrant ensemble piece unfolding around the disappearance of a teenage girl… Missing Fay…
inhabits each of its characters one chapter at a time – a more
traditional but arguably more vivid approach that affords a steady pulse
of dramatic irony as well as a measure of suspense… rich novel of loose
ends.
OBSERVER
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.
LITERARY REVIEW
Not only Britain’s most underrated writer, [Thorpe] is also among the most
original. He is a very good storyteller, with an inspired feel for
ordinary detail, yet in addition to his understated prose as effortless
as it is exact, he excels at characterisation as well as sudden flashes
of brilliant comic exasperation. Thorpe’s creations live off the page
and although not all of them are likeable, they are always real. Their
words and thoughts are true to the personalities Thorpe has crafted for
them… it 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.
IRISH TIMES
Marketing Plan
If you believe that English fiction is jaded, you must read Adam Thorpe.
HILARY MANTEL
Adam Thorpe is a marvel among contemporary British novelists, and we are lucky to have him.
INDEPENDENT
Thorpe is one of the most underrated writers on the planet.
D. J. TAYLOR
Suddenly English lives again.
JOHN FOWLES
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780224098007 |
| PRICE | £16.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 336 |
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