Headlong: A Novel (Bestselling Backlist) [Paperback]

Michael Frayn (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bestselling Backlist | Publication Date: September 1, 2000

An unlikely con man wagers wife, wealth, and sanity in pursuit of an elusive Old Master.

Invited to dinner by the boorish local landowner, Martin Clay, an easily distracted philosopher, and his art-historian wife are asked to assess three dusty paintings blocking the draught from the chimney. But hiding beneath the soot is nothing less-Martin believes-than a lost work by Bruegel. So begins a hilarious trail of lies and concealments, desperate schemes and soaring hopes as Martin, betting all that he owns and much that he doesn't, embarks on a quest to prove his hunch, win his wife over, and separate the painting from its owner.

In Headlong, Michael Frayn, "the master of what is seriously funny" (Anthony Burgess), offers a procession of superbly realized characters, from the country squire gone to seed to his giddy, oversexed young wife. All are burdened by human muddle and human cravings; all are searching for a moral compass as they grapple with greed, folly, and desire. And at the heart of the clamor is Breugel's vision, its dark tones warning of the real risks of temptation and obsession.

With this new novel, Michael Frayn has given us entertainment of the highest order. Supremely wise and wickedly funny, Headlong elevates Frayn into the front rank of contemporary novelists.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With its sumptuous surfaces and alluring sense of gravitas, classic Dutch painting has fascinated writers for centuries. It's easy to see why. Giant religious representations and gaudy classical scenes already have the weight of literature behind them. But an enigmatic portrait or dimly lit interior seems like a virtual incubator for narrative, and now Michael Frayn joins the Netherlandish fray in Headlong, which features a Bruegel canvas in the starring role.

The other star of the novel is youngish art historian Martin Clay (a Hugh Grant character gone to fat), who identifies the lost Bruegel in a tumbledown country home. The picture elicits an immediate shock of recognition:

Already, somewhere in those first few instants, something has begun to stir inside me. In my head, in the pit of my stomach. It's as if the sun's emerging from the clouds, and the world's changing in front of my eyes, from grey to golden. I can feel the warmth of the sunlight spreading over my skin, passing like a wave of beneficence through my entire body.

The sight of this masterwork glimmering through the "grimy pane of time" fires up Martin's customarily dilettantish intellect, and he decides to secure it for the nation--and make himself a fortune--without revealing its true value to the owner. Much double-dealing, bamboozling, and suppressed hysteria ensue as he and the owner try to outfox each other. Yet the heart of the novel is Martin's search for the meaning of the painting that has become his "triumph and torment and downfall." Bouncing from gallery to museum to library, he delivers an extended (and entertaining) lesson on iconography and landscape.

As Martin's obsession takes hold, the pace of the novel also accelerates into a breathless rush of action, comic anguish, and scholarly speculation. Not surprisingly, some of Martin's machinations go haywire, which leads to a certain amount of irritating slapstick--shady deals in underground parking lots, art treasures being tipped into the back of a filthy Land Rover, and so forth. But even if he makes his plot work overtime, Frayn is superb in the quest for the meaning of art, not to mention the lure of money and intellectual reputation. And for that alone, Headlong deserves to be called picture perfect. --Eithne Farry --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Frayn, a highly successful playwright (Noises Off) as well as a novelist of note (A Landing on the Sun; Now You Know), is an odd combination of skilled farceur and scholar, and these strands in his work seem somewhat at odds in this new novel, his first in six years. It is an intellectual comedy, veering occasionally into knockabout, revolving around a philosophical historian, Martin Clay, and his discovery, in the dilapidated manor house of a frightful country neighbor, of a painting he believes to be a missing Bruegel. The comedy arises from Martin's efforts to ascertain its provenance, raise some money for a token payment and somehow spirit the painting away from the churlish Tony Churt, calm the suspicions of his art historian wife, Kate, who is surprised by his sudden interest in her field, and fend off the advances of the highly flirtatious Laura Churt. Frayn is wonderfully funny about English country life, the mustier byways of art history, the art auction business and the deviousness that lurks within apparently mild-mannered art historians. But he has obviously read up extensively on Bruegel, his period and the possible political symbolism of the series of paintings of the seasons to which Churt's picture apparently belongs; and Frayn cannot resist giving the benefits of his scholarship back to the reader, at often exhaustive length, entirely halting his promisingly frolicsome narrative in the process. His attempts to give his lighthearted plot some intellectual weight almost sink the good partsAa pity, since Frayn proves himself again and again a highly civilized entertainer, and the good parts are both funny and true. 50,000 first printing; 7-city author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Picador (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312267460
• ISBN-13: 978-0312267469
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #403,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include Towards the End of the Morning, The Trick of It and Landing on the Sun. Headlong (1999) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while his most recent novel, Spies (2002), won the Whitbread Novel Award. His fifteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen and most recently Afterlife.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Did we go to Different Schools Together?, September 24, 2005

By 

Driver9 (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Headlong: A Novel (Bestselling Backlist) (Paperback)

I was not planning on sumbitting a review of this book until I read with alarm the undeserved slammings from the majority of the other reviewers. I was genuinely stunned to find the overwhelmingly negative response, or, at best, lukewarm reactions or damning with faint praise. This is especially true since my own experience of Headlong was extremely positive. I found the story to be engaging and funny and also well written. I found the characters believable and fully formed and did not mind at all the sidebar lecture on the Dutch Masters. In short, I LIKED it from start to finish, and found it to be one of the most entertaining novels I had read in a long time.

Considering the garbage that is being fobbed off on the unsuspecting public in the past few years, Headlong seemed like a breath of fresh air. I mean, there are some books that make it to the best seller list that make me wonder if the lost art of book-burning should be revived. But this was not one of them. Why not save the one-star reviews for books like the Historian and its idiotic and overpaid ilk?

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the ride, including the detours, February 16, 2000

By 

Paul Harrington - See all my reviews

This review is from: Headlong: A Novel (Hardcover)

If it is possible to experience whiplash while reading a book, then "Headlong" may be just the literary vehicle.

The deliciously measured pace with which Frayn leads us into his farce picks up speed as our art-besotted hero pratfalls his way to nabbing the missing masterpiece from its bumpkin owner.

Yet no sooner does Frayn have you hurtling along his farcical highway when he slams on the brakes and takes a sideroad into the arcane world of iconography, iconology and Netherlandish painting.

Then just as you've adjusted yourself to Frayn's scholarly, languid and rather taxing explorations of these disciplines, wham! He's put his foot to the floor and once again we're careening along with Martin Clay and his roadshow of inept scheming and second-guessing.

In the end, the reader requires a virtue which Martin seems to entirely lack: patience.

But it's worthwhile to endure with Frayn's detours and pedantry. Not only are they fascinating exercises in genuine scholarship, but they also make Martin Clay a thoroughly plausible art detective, dogged academic and blinkered buffoon.

Though sometimes ponderous, Frayn's meanderings through the artistic and political history of Europe are a curiously successful counterbalance to the slapstick results they engender.

There is one superbly comic moment which ties these two polar opposites together. It comes when Clay finally clutches his prize. His words of triumph are surprising yet obvious, and like the novel, hilarious.

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Flawed Great Book, December 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Headlong: A Novel (Hardcover)

Michael Frayn is an excellent writer who can appeal to the intellectuals and can also reach a mass audience with his wit and great prose. However, Headlong is a work of fiction that requires at minimum a passing knowledge of art history, because the detail is intense and can sometimes be detrimental to the plot. Even if your knowledge is minimal, an interest in art helps if you are willing to absorb the lessons that the book teaches as a matter of course. This is the book's one big flaw, because it becomes absolutely necessary to understand the historical and cultural facts that Frayn gives because they are essential to the plot moving forward and you can get bogged down in trying to follow it. It's really not that bad, but sometimes it's frustrating. In spite of that, this is one of those books that you can read in a few days because once the plot gets in full swing, there is a strong urge to get to the end and see how everything is resolved. It's very enjoyable and more importantly, makes you think. I can definitely see this novel becoming a film someday.