Twisty plotting, breakneck pacing and intriguing characterisation add up to an exciting single-sitting thrillerish treat

A fantastic murder mystery, packed with cryptic clues and countless plot twists. I could not put this book down

Easily the YA thriller of the year

Tightly plotted and brilliantly written, with sharp, believable characters, this whodunit is utterly irresistible

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thorpe’s ability to inhabit [his] disparate characters is hugely impressive, and he excels at charting the often volatile mood swings within a relationship.

Adam Thorpe is a wonderfully sympathetic novelist with a keen eye and alert ear... You cannot but admire and enjoy his ability to portray such a variety of people and to explore the randomness of barely-connected experiences. It’s a novel that demands, and deserves, to be read slowly, with close attention.

Missing Fay is a welcome and timely work about loneliness and alienation in a rootless, restless England. In years to come, when we are trying to understand the complexities that led from “Broken Britain” to Brexit, this thoughtful, unsettling and intricate novel may well provide some of the answers.

A vibrant ensembles piece unfolding around the disappearance of a teenage girl… Missing Fay… inhabits each of its characters one chapter at a time – a...vivid approach that affords a steady pulse of dramatic irony as well as a measure of suspense… [A] rich novel of loose ends.

There is no typical Adam Thorpe novel… Missing Fay defies categorisation and shows off his finest literary tricks.

Fluent and prolific, he ranges easily between voices and subjects… threaded together with care and panache… Most of the men in the novel…entertain fantasies about vulnerable women… In Missing Fay, Thorpe attempts, with typical self-effacement, to give them a voice of their own.

It’s wry, visceral, angry and wise.

Engrossing.

If you believe that English fiction is jaded, you must read Adam Thorpe

An intricately crafted novel, sharp-eared, current and full of heart, about a lost teenager in a lost England.

An upmarket take on the Gone Girl mystery.

With tremendous flair, Thorpe opens up a vista of present-day middle England.

The whole novel is full of hilarious, brilliant observations about writing, life and crushes.

One of the funniest and most inventive youngish writers of non-fiction in America… Selin’s meandering observations and gentle humour make her an engaging narrator… Batuman examines complex subjects with an appealing lightness of touch… The scene when Selin leaves the Hungarian village is surprisingly moving and encapsulates the overall effect of a novel which reminds us that dead time can be full of life.

Sweetly funny, The Idiot rejects the doctrine of omitting needless words in favour of marvelling…at the complexities of language and communication.

Charming… A gentle coming-of-age novel drawing on Batuman’s time at Harvard in the mid-1990s… It’s in such acute portrayals of early adulthood’s uncertainties that this pleasantly rambling tale leaves its most vivid impression.

A delightfully digressive campus novel.

There is more than one idiot in this delightful and slyly funny coming-of-age novel... Will strike a chord for any former fresher who felt the same way. (That would be all of us.)

Batuman, in seemingly writing a novel about nothing, has produced an incredibly complex, accurate and funny novel.

I never want to finish it, so I’m reading it very slowly.

Every page is thicketed with jokes, riffs, theories of language. It’s a portrait of an intellectual and sentimental education that offers almost unseemly pleasure.

Elif Batuman is a real writer, and should be allowed to write whatever the hell she likes.

Selin’s deadpan narration is often very funny indeed

This is a capacious book that creates an alternative world

At once clever and clueless, Batuman’s heroine shows us with just how messy it can be to forge a self

One of the best novels I read all summer... a painstakingly accurate depiction of the balancing act that is student-life. As clever as it is funny, Batuman's debut novel allows us to laugh at our own stupidity, and celebrate our own cluelessness.

The Idiot... manages the trick of being laugh-out-loud funny while not actually being a comedy. It just observers life, in all its truth and is hilarious for page after page.

I finally read The Idiot by Elif Batuman and everyone is correct, she is clearly a genius