Headlong [Import] [Paperback]

Michael Frayn (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; New Ed edition (2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571201474
• ISBN-13: 978-0571201471
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,515,936 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.