Missing Fay

by Adam Thorpe

'An intricately crafted novel, sharp-eared, current and full of heart' Guardian, Books of the YearA spirited 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 – all touched in life-changing ways. David is on a family holiday on the bleak Lincolnshire coast; Howard, a retired steel worker with some dodgy friends; Cosmina, a Romanian immigrant; Sheena, middle-aged and single, running a kiddies’ clothes shop; Mike, owner of a second-hand bookshop and secretly in love with Cosmina; and Chris, a TV-producer-become-monk struggling to 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?

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Crime

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2017

About the author

Adam Thorpe is a British poet, novelist, and playwright whose works also include short stories and radio dramas.

Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India, Cameroon, and England. Graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled in London to teach drama and English literature.

His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won great critical acclaim worldwide, including that of novelist John Fowles, who reviewed it in The Guardian, calling it "(...) the most interesting first novel I have read these last years". The novel was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for 1992.

Adam Thorpe lives in France with his wife and three children.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading Adam Thorpe's fiction ever since his acclaimed debut novel Ulverton, which told the story of an English village from mediaeval times to the present day. He is an accomplished and versatile writer and his books are never predictable. Many of them have very low numbers of reviews here.

This one has been compared by some to Reservoir 13 and I can see the superficial similarities - both involve the disappearance of a teenage girl, both are set in counties that border Nottinghamshire and both follow a number of characters rather than focusing on one, but this comparison is probably unfair, as it sets impossibly high standards.

This is more of a collection of linked stories each of which has one main protagonist. All are set in Lincolnshire and most in the city of Lincoln itself, and there are many links and common characters. The girl Fay gets several short chapters of her own. What links most of them is loneliness, and they form something of a snapshot of Brexit Britain, but all of the stories are somewhat elliptical and there is no chronological progression (which would have been confusing had the chapters not been dated).

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a novel about a missing fourteen year old girl and consequently it is bound to draw comparison with Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. It is also set in Lincoln where I live. I remember reading Ulverton many years ago, but have read nothing else by Thorpe. The geography of the area is a bit hit and miss. Fay lives on the Ermine estate, well known in Lincoln. He characterises it as being a typical run down white working class housing estate which you would find in many cities. This is a bit of an over simplification and there are a few other liberties with the geography, including the addition of a street of shops which doesn’t exist!
We hear a set of voices including Fay’s. She is portrayed as a tough streetwise fourteen year old with a sharp tongue and a troubled home life: still very vulnerable and inseparable from her dog (who goes missing with her). The other voices include a very irritating tourist and his family on the Lincolnshire coast, a retired steelworker, a second hand bookshop owner, the manager of a children’s clothes shop, a Rumanian care worker and a postulant monk in a nearby monastery. We also periodically hear from Fay. The polyphonic nature of the novel is at the same time a strength and a drawback. The first and the last voices I found particularly annoying. In fact, although the characters are well drawn, I found them pretty stereotypical. The bookshop owner in his 50s was portrayed as slightly creepy and a little desperate (very unfair on the bookshop owners I know). The clothes shop manager was a late 40 something woman looking for love and again appearing as slightly desperate. There are links between the characters, some rather tenuous. Fay does work experience in the clothes shop and steals a book (on dogs) from the bookshop. The care worker finds Fay’s abandoned coat. A couple of the characters only see the missing posters. The last voice (apart from Fay’s) is the postulant monk and there are a couple of oblique suggestions about Fay’s fate, but nothing substantial. The ending is open so the reader is left to wonder what happened.
Thorpe tells a story well and all of his characters are flawed and rather sad. It is set in 2012, so before the Brexit fiasco, but there are hints of the area being somewhat hostile and xenophobic. I wonder what the story of Fay adds to the novel and as I said there is an element of stereo typing as well. It just felt unconnected and the messing about with some of the geography irritated me.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strangely published in the same year as Reservoir 13 – this book also features the disappearance of a English teenager, without that disappearance either being central to the novel or resolved.

This book though takes a more conventional approach than “Reservoir 13”, featuring third party point of view chapters with different central characters in the town of Lincoln (with shorter chapters from the missing girl Fay before her disappearance).

The characters are: David – an New Zealander Eco Campaigner, on what he realises quickly is a misjudged holiday to what he expected to be the Lincolnshire countryside, with his Australian wife and three children; Howard – a survivor of the Kindertransport, now a retired steel worker whose wife is dying in a care home, playing monopoly for money with a group of ex-colleagues he is still haunted by a girl who went missing years previously and the small inadvertent part he may have played in her disappearance by oiling the swing from which she ran off; Cosmina – a Rumanian immigrant working in a care home while she saves money; Sheena – a single mid-40 something who runs a upmarket children’s clothes boutique which she recently sold to a chain owner, she fancies Paul the eccentric barefooted owner of an alternative shoe shop in the same lane, but in the absence of any seeming return of her interest starts an affair with an odd 20-something assistant store manager Gavin; Mike – another shop owner – in this case of a run-down but well known second hand bookstore, Mike is in his 50s and his mother suffering from dementia is in the same care home as Howard’s wife and where Cosmina works, and he becomes obsessed with her; Chris – an ex TV producer who after his work starts to fail and his wife talks about divorce, decides to become a monk.

There are various connections between the characters and between each and Fay.

The strength of the book is the way in which Thorpe captures the different voices and distinct thoughts of each character; further the characters feel like they are fully formed with back-stories and future developments outside of the brief glimpse we catch off their lives. However I felt overall that the book was not very successful, I think for a number of reasons: the most cliched of all the characters was the first – David and the most unbelievable of all the characters was the last – Chris, so that the book started in cliché and ended in lack of credibility; I found the mix of supernatural jarred with what could and should have been an down to earth portrait of a classic area of pro-Brexit England ex-London struggling with European immigration, globalisation and with gentrification from visitors and relocators from London; finally I could not really see why the story of Fay was necessary to the novel.

[SueKich · Rating 1 out of 5]

Missing Fay – Found Wanting.

An intensely dislikeable eco-warrior dad from Auckland, a retired steel worker who plays pub-crawl Monopoly, a Romanian care worker who gets knocked off her bike, a kids’ clothes shop manager – but I’d lost interest by the time I’d got to Sheena.

Set on the bleak Lincolnshire coast, these stories are loosely linked by the disappearance of a local 14-year old girl and the proximity of a local monastery which flogs fudge and body lotion.

The various voices are cleverly done and clearly differentiated but I regret to say I couldn’t believe them. I was distracted by the sound of the author’s brain whirring away. Not for me, I’m afraid.

[MisterHobgoblin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Missing Fay is not so much a novel as a collection of six pen portraits of different people in and around Lincoln. These portraits inter-relate, and they are interleaved and intertwined with the story of a missing teenager whose face features on faded posters in cafes and shops, but this is not a novel with a unifying narrative. The strands don't all come together at the end.

So the success of the text hinges on the characters. All are well drawn and quite distinctive. They speak in different voices and think different thoughts. And they are all quite unlovely. Whether it is David, the father from Hell (actually from New Zealand) whose mission is to shield his family from capitalist waste; or Mike, the bookshop owner who dislikes people, haunted by a moving book; or Chris the seriously creepy postulant monk... They are all engaging, yet somehow also not engaging. When they have a story to tell - when they are doing stuff - they are interesting enough. But they do have a tendency to meander off into winer monologue that can be distancing and even a little wearisome.

And then there is Fay. Whereas most missing teenagers are little innocent angels, victims of the cruel world, Fay is at least the co-producer of her misfortune. Sure, she comes from the rough end of town and her stepfather is not exactly nurturing, but Fay seems to have chosen the life of a light-fingered truant all by herself. She speaks her slight thoughts in a convincing but difficult local dialect - although she has little to say and seems to operate more on instinct than thought.

This adds up to an intriguing work where the pieces of the puzzle are more interesting than the puzzle itself. It is well worth reading, even if it does feel somewhat arbitrary to be following the particular characters we find in its pages.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best novels I read in 2017 was Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. The jumping off point for that book was the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl on New Year’s Eve while on holiday in England’s Peak District.

In similar vein Adam Thorpe’s novel Missing Fay begins with the disappearance of a teenage schoolgirl and examines the way in which her life touches some of the people in her neighbourhood.

Neither novel has a central protagonist. Nor do they end with any resolution about what happened to the girl. This is not crime fiction but an exploration of the ways in which her disappearance affects the community in which she lives.

McGregor’s novel contains a myriad of characters. Thorpe gives us six: a shop manager, a bookshop owner, an eco-warrier dad, a retired steel worker, a Romanian healthcare assistant and a burned out television executive who has joined a silent monastic order as a postulant.

Most of these characters see Fay fleetingly, as a face on a “Have you seen this girl?” poster. Howard, the steelworker, catches a glimpse of her as she runs with her dog through a local park. Cosmina, the Romanian finds a discarded coat in the woodland although only in retrospect does she wonder if this belonged to Fay. Chris the postulant dreams of her as a flaming angel flying through the air to land in the monastery’s lake.

Only Sheena, who manages a pricey children’s clothing boutique for yummy-mummy customers, spends any quality time with the girl. When Fay arrives on her threshold one morning, Sheena anticipates she’ll be as useless as all the other work experience students that have crossed her path. Fay comes from a dysfunctional family and lives in the city’s less desirable housing estate. Her mum spends the day in bed nursing her deep depression while Fay’s pot-smoking step dad busks around town when he’s not involved in some shady affairs. Sheena discovers that despite the pressure the girl is under, Fay is intelligent, charming and funny.

The six stories initially seem to have little to link them (beyond the obvious reference to Fay’s disappearance) but Thorpe has cleverly planted connections throughout the novel and drops lots of hints. Fudge and the monastery crop up at several points. Chris, the would-be monk, makes it for the gift shop. Sheena eats it. Eco-Warrior David takes his family to the monastery. Does the blue car that a few people mention seeing around, have any connection to Fay’s disappearance? Who is the creepy looking guy she sees lurking in the bushes – is it Howard who has taken himself to the park in between a pub crawl with his mates? The significance of these apparently random references only becomes apparent once you’ve read a few stories.

The fact we don’t instantly pick up on some clues adds a further layer to the meaning of the book’s title. We ‘miss’ these signs just as much as the six people in the story let Fay slip out of their consciousness. Missing Fay isn’t about a physical disappearance but how through our lives we fail to connect with each other. Opportunities are missed, signs are misread aplenty in this novel.

That’s not the only message Thorpe conveys through his novel. Attitudes towards immigrants feature largely. But we also get the futility of attempts to ‘save’ the planet. David and his wife vouchsafe consumerism and are determined to raise their children in a way that makes minimal impact on the environment. But when he looks upon a wind farm he reluctantly admits that it is “a hopeless gesture, really, against the infinite kilowattage of nature herself”.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t excited to read this book when my book club selected it for this month purely because I thought it would be too similar to Reservoir 13. But it was a lot more enjoyable than expected. McGregor’s work stands out because its so beautifully crafted and the imagery is wonderful. But Thorpe’s novel certainly deserves attention.

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my kind of novel. The story revolves around the disappearance of 14 year old Fay but this becomes a device to link together a range of narratives from the points of view of different characters most of whom are linked to Fay, often tangentially, and to each other.
The setting in and around Lincoln was,for me, very authentic (although it’s not an area I’m familiar with). Adam Thorpe’s achievement is his skill in creating believable, sympathetic characters and avoiding what could have been easy stereotypes (the working class family on the sink estate, the Eastern European care worker, the flighty middle aged woman).
There have been a number of recent novels that have been described as ‘state of the nation’ but this is one that can carry that label without being preachy or overtly ideological.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

In describing the story of the disappearance of 14 year old Fay, Thorpe devotes a fairly lengthy chapter to each of five people associated with her and her life at the time leading up to the event., some of whom have a lot more to do with her than others. This is therefore, a literary novel of these folk of Lincoln rather than a crime story. Though some of the chapters vaguely interlink (not all of them) there is a lack of a spine to the storyline, and for at least half of the novel the relevance of the writing to Fay’s disappearance is hard if not impossible to find.

I can see it has very mixed reviews, but to me it was disappointing, and a book that asks far more questions than it answers.

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reminded me of 'Reservoir 13' by Jon McGregor. It was example of beautiful writing not making for an enjoyable read - this was often well described and often successful in giving an insight in to the thoughts and personalities of a variety of characters, but because most of these characters were either not particularly likeable or not particularly interesting, and because there was a dreadful lack of drama (just a series of smaller approaching bad things, none of which really panned out in the way I hoped to read about) it just felt far more of a struggle than it should've been. I would give it two and a half stars - three for the writing but two for the lack of plot.

[Venuskitten · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fay is a fourteen year old schoolgirl who is missing from home with her mongrel dog, Pooch. "Home" for Fay is in a rough area of Lincoln, living with her mother and layabout stepfather in a chaotic household.
The novel relates the experiences of several characters who have some connection with Fay; they may have seen her "missing" poster, or the coat she was wearing when she disappeared, or managed the shop where she worked on days when she bunked off school.
Although the novel is entitled "Missing Fay", this does not mean "missing" in the sense of wishing she would come back safe and well - it is more that various characters in the book saw her, or traces of her, but missed the chance to act on the information, so that her disappearance remains a mystery throughout the book.
We know very little more about Fay's disappearance at the end of the novel than we did at the beginning, and for many readers, that will be a big disappointment. Although Fay is one of the characters who narrates her story (but only part of it), even that fails to shed light on where she went and what happened to her.
I expected to have some resolution at the end of the book and felt let down when the author did not provide it

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Told in a series of linked narratives, the book explores a small community in Lincolnshire and how the lives of a disparate group of characters are touched, however tangentially, by the disappearance of 14-year-old Fay. Each one of these characters come alive on the page and I really felt that if I were to walk down the street, especially the one where many of them have small businesses, somehow I would know them instantly, and if I were to visit the run-down Ermine estate where Fay lives I would recognise her too, such is the skill with which Thorpe delineates them. His descriptions of the landscape are equally vivid, evocative descriptions which make the landscape come alive just as the people do. Fay herself is a particularly nuanced and complex character, but all of the people around her have distinctive and convincing voices, and are drawn with great subtlety. The novel is more a series of vignettes than a sustained narrative and I found this approach rewarding. Much is left to the reader’s perception and understanding. Nothing is resolved, nothing is explained, it’s just a slice of life at a particular time and in a particular place. There’s some very fine writing here indeed and I found the book absorbing, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable.

[Yvonne Stevens · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had read such rave reviews of this book that I was anticipating a great read. I was most disappointed.
I thought the stream of consciousness style clever, though off putting at first, and sometimes hard to stay concentrated on.
But what really bothered me was the ending. We never got to know what happened to Fay. If there were clues they went over my head. Clearly a talented writer but the book wasn’t for me.

[Deb Lancaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an unexpected gem. More like a load of vignettes interlinked by geography. You see the characters vaguely through other people's eyes. They're all brilliantly drawn and I was immersed in each of their sad stories.

One minor point is the constant linking of women in their 40s as old, ugly and decrepit. Bit harsh and these repetious observations broke the immersion a bit as obviously not every person thinks that way, but all of these did. Which suggests they're the author's observations...

Having said that I really liked this. Fay is the elusive central figure. And we don't find out what happened to her. But her story is so perfectly written. I could see her. The last page finishes just as she disappears.

Complex and real and definitely worth a read.

[Madalina Kirby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have given it 4 stars, the writing is brilliant. BUT... whoever advised the author on all things Romanian (someone called Istvan, according to the blurb) either lives in a Romania that I don’t know or misled him on purpose. Such a shame! Such sloppy research, if done at all. It ruined almost everything for me.

[Bethany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but I found it quite confusing? It seemed to link to the main plot and then go off in a completely different direction. Some of it was brilliant, but some of it was hard to follow.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought provoking

[Sue Lewin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usual brilliant writing from Adam Thorpe. Tight punchy prose, great characterisation and some unanswered questions. ..

[Vanessa McMurtrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book club choice. Mixed feelings about how to rate this novel. I must admit having to force myself to pick it up as I did not find it a page-turner, however, I can't deny the writing has moments of eloquence.
On the one hand, it's observational - about family dynamics, community responsibility, loss, immigration and the pressures faced by young people today, on the other, six narrators and the missing Fay are voiced by small glimpses into their tenuously connected lives, with reasonable character development for the vignettes.
If you are looking for a fast-paced thriller with a clear resolution, then you may want to look elsewhere.

[Flavia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a carefully and very cleverly crafted novel with a rich and multilayered storyline. It reads as a series of interlinked short stories (reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout’s ‘Olive Kettridge’) where the characters (the characters names are the chapter titles) circle, interweave, pepper and add layer and angles to every day life in 2012 Lincolnshire.

Within the novel there are short inserts from Fay’s own point of view which reveal aspects about her life around the time she went missing. But more importantly there are the points of view of people who knew her and people who knew of her through the missing posters; a father struggling with family life while on holiday, a middle aged woman who is in love with a man she can’t seem to declare her feelings to, an alcoholic second-hand bookseller sealed off in his own private world (like the story enclosed within the book covers), an elderly man who is nostalgic for his past, a Rumanian nurse racked by homesickness and a businessman turned monk (my favourite chapter). Each of these voices are struggling, people on the brink of change (or sanity) or turning point of their lives (relating to Fay’s own dramatic turning point from being present to disappearing).

The chapters could read as separate pieces of work they are so skilfully and brilliantly put together. However, Thorpe adds colour and consistency to the work as these characters and their lives touch/nudge up lightly upon each other and we witness how some of them view one another, as well as how they interact and react to one another.

Thorpe’s storytelling is absorbing and full of wonderful detail. This is a masterpiece on empathy and it keeps the reader engrossed as we try to fit the pieces together (and keep an eye out for the overlapping stories). It is an extremely visual novel but Adam Thorpe really excels in voice (and his dialogue is perfect – if present. Fittingly there is little dialogue in the monk’s chapter). Each chapter has a distinct voice, pitch, tone, pace, sound, experience and power. This is close to genius.

In ‘Missing Fay’ Adam Thorpe has managed to display the complexity of human nature and the depth of personality with each of his characters (even secondary characters that do not have a chapter of their own but flit amongst the other characters’ lives are bought powerfully into life). This is a truly remarkable book worth rereading again and again to really enjoy and pick out all the delicious details Thorpe has scattered amongst the stories.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

In places this was a good deal more than okay, but I nearly sank under the nastiness of the characters in the opening chapter and did so shortly before the end.
This does have parallels with Ulverston, and I get the impression that a lot of the time Adam Thorpe enjoys discovering new characters and writing, with skill, short stories about them, then hunts around for an appropriate theme on which to hang them ('arrange them around' perhaps the better choice. I've no problem with that (do it myself to some extent) nor did the non-linear arrangement upset me, but really I couldn't find anything of interest in any of them. No spoilers because I skim-read the latter few pages and missed whatever happened. If it did.

[Dianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarre reading a novel set in a city you know really well. The portrayal of Lincoln was accurate in parts, but unfamiliar in others. A disturbing book, I can see why comparisons are drawn with Jon McGregor's 'Reservoir 13', but it is quite different. The character, Fay, seen fleetingly through the eyes of various characters, as well as in cameo scenes of her own, remains illusive throughout. I really liked the character building in the almost stand-alone stories within the novel, but there is a clever interlinking of these characters as you read on. An uncomfortable book, but compelling and believable.

[Bernice · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned

[Andrew Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult to comment on this book as I have never read a book before set in Lincoln (my home town). Lincoln is often mentioned and visited in books, particularly in a historic context but for a modern novel set in modern times is new to me. So I suspect I was more interested in the depiction of Lincoln than I was of the story,
I live close to, have friends living on & have worked on the Ermine Estate. It is so strange to read about walking down Burton Road (which I do every day), being in the park next to where my friend lives. Generally speaking the descriptions are accurate although of course there is poetic license. Totter Hill does not exist. I'm not sure it was necessary for it not to be Steep Hill, not that it really matters. Of course there is a world renown electrical shop at the bottom of Steep Hill & although there are a few second hand bookshops there was one I had in mind. There are chic children's clothes shops and this beautiful area around the Cathedral is becoming increasingly touristy. Of course when you live somewhere you don't always notice & it is difficult to see where you live as a tourist attraction but of course it is. Steep Hill is wonderful as is the area around the Cathedral but of course when you walk around it on a daily basis you don't see it as a visitor does, its just the walk into town. One of my friends loves coming to Lincoln because it isn't over run with tourists but maybe it is changing.
There are obvious comparisons with Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. Do we ever really know what's happened to Fay? Maybe that is the point. Life can be very unclear and although we might like explanations we don't get them. What does happen to people who disappear. Disasters occur & life goes on although for some their lives are constantly blighted. We don't get to see this, we don't really know about Fay's family apart from what Fay tells us. It would be easy to say that the depiction of life on a big council estate is too stereotypical but at the same time that could be unfair as of course there are families like Fay's. The Ermine is a very mixed estate with pockets of deprivation & areas where people have bought their own homes. Lincoln Fields is now a building site with new houses going up daily. Riseholme Road has lots of new builds. It is changing environment. It is just my home town & therefore I have my own preconceptions. Local dialect is used "as they say round here" which I have never heard but that doesn't mean its inaccurate.
If anything this book made me look at Lincoln as an outsider, which was an interesting experience but possibly made it hard to actually notice the content of the book.

[Peter D · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel centres around a 14-year-old girl who goes missing from a Council Estate in Lincoln. Rather than being a whodunnit the focus is on six people who have crossed Fay’s path or who feel a connection to her.

There’s retired steel worker Howard whose sighting of Fay in a park stirs up uncomfortable memories for him. Cosmina, a Health Care Assistant from Romania, who finds Fay’s discarded coat. Sheena, the manager of children’s clothes shop, where Fay had worked. Mike who owns a secondhand bookshop where he catches Fay shoplifting. Chris an ex television producer turned monk who sees Fay in a vision. David an eco-campaigner on a family holiday who sees a missing poster of Fay and collects them to bring them back to London.

The novel works as a series of chapters focussing on each character with some short inserts from Fay on the days leading up to her disappearance. Each character has real depth and their own voice and tone. Despite their obvious flaws you feel an empathy for them, and I found myself wanting to know more about all of them. I should mention that I found the least enjoyable chapters to be the first and last chapters focusing on David and Chris. This may have been as they are not residents of the village and there was no real connection to any of the other characters. They are still very well written and offers insights to the human psyche.

By bringing together this eccentric cast Thorpe’s is obviously trying to say something about England in 2012 and this does work as a document of time and place without appearing to try too hard to be a ‘state of nation’ novel, such as John Lancaster’s Capital. It all adds to a very impressive read from an author with real skill and an impressive ability to bring a diverse range of characters to life.

[Laura Spira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Happily, this book turned out to be far more interesting than the first few pages suggested. The characters introduced at the beginning of the book were, I found, quite repellent (a couple from New Zealand with a faltering marriage, on a holiday trip with their children) but fortunately I realised that the book consisted of several stories connected by the theme of the missing girl of the title and both Fay and the other characters featured were much more vivid, arousing the reader's concern and interest. I particularly liked Sheena, the lonely boutique manager, who gives Fay a work experience job, and Mike, the bookshop owner who is haunted by a book which seems to move about mysteriously. The trials and tribulations of sustaining small businesses were convincing (although I would have expected a vape shop to feature somewhere to bring the picture completely up to date).

The claustrophobic sense of life in a small town in a depressed part of the country is very well conveyed. Fay's family situation is sketchily depicted but feels entirely authentic. The structure of the novel proves to be intricate and clever. And I found the ending entirely satisfactory.

(I received an ARC from Netgalley.)

[Iona A · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘’Every angel is terrifying’’
Reading through the most recent reviews, I was intrigued by some of the readers’ puzzlement and frustration, and the absolute necessity for them to find out what happened to Fay to somewhat feel satisfied with their purchase. This novel is not for those after a whodunit or simply looking for entertainment. It has both depth and nuance.
This piece of writing portrays some of the deprivation resulting from the austerity programme initiated in 2010. The ambient austerity felt by most protagonists of the story made me think of movies by Lars Von Trier. I remember leaving the cinema feeling overwhelmed by a wave of sensations and not understanding where these originated until days later and a deep session of introspection. As such I think Missing Fay is to be experienced by both the mind and the nervous system.
If one needs to find a meaning, they may want to read the epigraph, ‘’Every angel is terrifying’’, from Rainer Maria Rilke. This both confirms Adam Thorpe’s poetic streak, evident throughout the novel, and suggests that Fay (meaning elf or fairy) is the spirit, the angel connecting all these seemingly disconnected stories.

[Anne Goodwin]

Adam Thorpe’s eleventh novel is a psycho-geography of contemporary Lincolnshire, Brexit capital of the UK. From the splendour of Lincoln’s mediaeval cathedral quarter to its ugly council estates, from Lincolnshire’s nature reserves to its vast plains of agricultural land, we meet the diversity of characters who live and work there, whose lives interact in ways in which only the reader, with our privileged access to the details which they themselves may not notice, is aware. Central to these tenuous connections, yet perhaps the least noticed of all, is fourteen-year-old Fay and her dog, Pooch, who go missing in circumstances that are never made entirely clear – although there’s a strong hint towards the end. But unravelling the mystery isn’t the point of this story, for all of the characters have something missing from their lives, are searching for an answer that’s just beyond their reach.
Full review:
Alienation in contemporary England: Missing Fay & Jihadi Jane http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/...

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam Thorpe made his name back in the nineties with his first novel, Ulverton, an astonishing multi-voiced history of an English village. It would still be one of my desert island books. Strangely enough, I haven't read any of the many books he has published since then, until Missing Fay caught my attention.
Set in Lincoln in 2012, it brilliantly captures multiple views of a fractured society. 14 year old Fay disappears from her home on the Ermine estate in the north of the city, but the ripples felt by people whose paths had intersected with hers either before or after her vanishing are the real subject of this book. Adam Thorpe really gets under the skin of his characters, revealing a series of bleak and often lonely lives. Events are echoed and reflected back across each of their stories, building into a rich and real portrayal of human society.

[Delphine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fay Sheenan, a 14-year-old girl from Lincoln, goes missing. Thorpe creates a cast of brilliant eccentrics that are more or less loosely connected to Fay. There's David, an eco-campaigner who gets drawn to Fay's 'missing' poster, Howard, a retired steel worker with unpleasant memories of other young girls, Cosmina, a Romanian immigrant who finds Fay's dishevelled fur coat, Sheena, middle-aged and sexually entangled with creep Gavin, Mike, the misanthropic owner of a haunted second-hand bookshop, and Chris, a TV producer become Trappist monk.

As in Ulverton, Thorpe proves he is a master in characterisation, as all characters deal with loss and what's missing in their lives. The prose is elegant, brilliant, evocative. From a technical point of view, Thorpe is probably the best British writer alive today.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the other reviews are very well detailed and analyse the characters well, so I don't have much to add to what has already been said.

It took me a while to get into the novel but when I did, I began to enjoy it thoroughly. The characterisation is hilarious, relatable, poignant, and realistic. I would love to read similar works with such great insight.

At first, I was disappointed that we never find out what actually happened to Fay. I thought the ending would lead me to be frustrated with the book but actually I felt that Adam Thorpe creates such plausible links between the characters' stories and gives us enough paths to go down that the reader can make up their own mind as to Fay's terminus.

Overall really enjoyable read and I recommend this book if you like connections within a story, excellent characterisation, and mystery.