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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.
- Sales Rank: #342950 in Books
- Published on: 2000-09-01
- Released on: 2000-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.22" h x .97" w x 5.55" l, .85 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
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
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.
From Library Journal
At the heart of this new novel by noted English dramatist Frayn is a dusty painting that bumbling philosopher Martin Clay suspects might be a missing Bruegel.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
What a frolic!
By Grady Harp
Michael Frayn is very current with his plays "Copenhagen" and "Noises Off" delighting audiences bicoastally. His facility for words, whether placed in the mouths of actors or on the page of a novel, makes him a delight. "Headlong" is a witty, erudite frolic with the protagonist being an obscure painting by Breughel owned by an naive country bumpkin and coveted by his apparent art historian friend. Frayn has a solid quartet of main characters that bounce across his net offering both sides of a dilemma as to whether knowledge about art provides real ownership over mere possession of a "pretty picture". Doesn't much sound like an interesting plot, but in Frayn's facile hands this novel becomes endlessly entertaining and funny and wise and .... successful. He makes the light touch of comedy drive home some rather intense points of justice. A fun book for scholar and light reader alike.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
I probably would have given 'Headlong' the Booker myself.
By Richard Thurston
Visited London for the first time this past August and among the highlights of the trip were reading 'Headlong' and seeing Frayn's 'Copenhagen'. Terrific blend of farce, moral ambiguity and scholarship, this is one of the best books I've read all year. Tremendously entertaining, it also includes some of the most lucid art history I've ever read. Frayn makes Bruegel's paintings come alive and his descriptions of Holland under Spanish rule are chilling. Very intelligent. Very funny.
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
History Thick/Characters So So
By A Customer
This is a novel in the tradition of The Name of the Rose. Frayn is clearly more interested in the history of Breugle (which is fascinating), than the concreteness of his characters. For me the historical content was so great that it almost completely made up for the blah characters. By the end I didn't feel like I really knew or identified with any of the characters, but I was incredibly interested in Breugle's art historical period. This book didn't make me want to read more by Frayn, but it did make me want to investigate art history.
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