Headlong (Bestselling Backlist) - Softcover

Youngish art historian Martin Clay (a Hugh Grant character gone to fat) identifies a lost Bruegel in a tumble-down country home. His intellectual dilettantism becomes focused by the arresting sight of a painting glimmering through the "grimy pane of time" and he decides to secure the painting for the nation, and a fortune for himself, without letting the owner discover its true value. There follows much double-dealing, bamboozling and suppressed hysteria as Martin and the owner try to outwit each other. At the heart of the novel is Martin's search for the meaning of the painting that has become his fate, his "triumph and torment and downfall". He pitches from gallery to museum to library delivering an extended history lesson on iconography, iconology, landscape and the ever elusive story in the Bruegel. As his obsession takes hold, the pace of the novel picks up too, a breathless rush of action, comic anguish and scholarly speculation. At points there is some irritating slapstick--shady deals in underground car parks, art treasures being tipped into the back of a mucky Landrover, as Martin's machinations go haywire, and disaster looms.

Frayn is good on the quest for the meaning of art and the lure of money and intellectual reputation, even if the plot is made to work too hard. Martin so beautifully describes the Bruegels he's studying that the reader cannot help wanting to look at them too, to step out of the story and into the picture. Thus, Headlong might have benefited from a set of illustrations. Of course, the whole novel could be an elaborate, enjoyable art hoax, and the Breugels he's describing don't actually exist at all. And if that's the case, it's very successfully done.

--Eithne Farry --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title

Running time approx 2 hours 20 minutes

Rueful and amusing . . . Frayn is that rare writer who succeeds as both a novelist and a dramatist. "Randy Cohen, The New York Times Book Review"

Finely wrought and highly comical . . . a perfect introduction to a writer who likes to pull the rug out from under your feet while offering you the most seductive of smiles. "Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times"

Exceedingly funny, both in event and in intellectual high jinx. "Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Sunday Globe"

Part detective story, part art history lesson, part cautionary tale, and entirely funny. "The New Yorker"

Frayn isn't stingy, even here, with the laughs, gleefully pricking holes in the overconfidence of academic art criticism. But just below the sugar powder you bite into his tough-minded essay on how history and individual human folly combine and conspire to manufacture art's 'message.' "Judith Dunford, Los Angeles Times Book Review"

Delightful...this novel, deadpan hilarious and wonderfully written, is as effective a work of historical reconstruction as it is a comedy. "David Walton, Philadelphia Inquirer"

"Headlong "offers an enthralling and refreshingly grown-up take on the alarming speed with which our morals shift to accommodate our desires, and on the lofty and low ways in which the great art of the past continues to affect us. "Elle""

"Rueful and amusing . . . Frayn is that rare writer who succeeds as both a novelist and a dramatist." --Randy Cohen, The New York Times Book Review

"Finely wrought and highly comical . . . a perfect introduction to a writer who likes to pull the rug out from under your feet while offering you the most seductive of smiles." --Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times

"Exceedingly funny, both in event and in intellectual high jinx." --Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Sunday Globe

"Part detective story, part art history lesson, part cautionary tale, and entirely funny." --The New Yorker

"Frayn isn't stingy, even here, with the laughs, gleefully pricking holes in the overconfidence of academic art criticism. But just below the sugar powder you bite into his tough-minded essay on how history and individual human folly combine and conspire to manufacture art's 'message.'" --Judith Dunford, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Delightful...this novel, deadpan hilarious and wonderfully written, is as effective a work of historical reconstruction as it is a comedy." --David Walton, Philadelphia Inquirer

"Headlong offers an enthralling and refreshingly grown-up take on the alarming speed with which our morals shift to accommodate our desires, and on the lofty and low ways in which the great art of the past continues to affect us." --Elle