Another gone girl

Adam Thorpe’s latest novel, Missing Fay, examines the lives of a disparate group of people in Lincolnshire, all touched in some way by the disappearance of the titular Fay, a sparky, gobby 14-year-old girl from a council estate. This is an England of motorways, dull campsites, immigrants and nursing homes: where transience is the norm, where those who sit still gently simmer. The landscapes and interiors are rendered with the delicate strokes of a painter, whether the bucolic tainted by sudden violence, the ancient streets of Lincoln, or the underpasses and playgrounds haunted by local youths. In contrast, played out on televisions in the background, are the Davos summit and the kinds of talent shows that promise instant fame.

Thorpe is a master of quiet ironies, of exquisite detail. The book is essentially powered by the mounting sense of unease gathering around Fay’s fate, but each of his characters, who may or may not be involved directly, displays moments of startling brightness or despair: in short, he captures the constantly shifting calibrations of the human brain as it goes about its daily existence, and the sounds of people shoring up fragments against their ruin.