Rating: 
Summary: Very good, but overdone.
Review: Martin Clay, a philosopher turned art expert, believes he has identified a lost Brueghel masterpiece, and suffers misadventures in trying to acquire it, 'on the cheap'. He must contend with the caddish owner of the painting and also the skepticism of his wife, even more of an art expert than he. The book is intended as a satirical, farcical comedy, and the physical comedy aspects work. There is a great deal of art criticism in the book, focusing on the putative cultural, historical, and personal context of the painting, and its symbolism. I, possibly naively, took this as mostly serious, and found it wonderful, and highly educational, not just in the specifics, but in illuminating the attraction and value of this type of art criticism. The book does a splendid job in portraying a marriage between 2 loving people, Martin and his wife, stressed by Martin's unshared obsession. I would have enjoyed the book more if Martin had fewer hoops to go through, and if some of his calculations and plans weren't so absurd. I also found the art discussions to be overdone at times.
Rating: 
Summary: poor plot, paper-thin characters
Review: This book was just awful. The characters were paper-thin, with no substance. The plot was entirely predictable, and pointless. I read to the end, thinking that there had to be some twist, some redeeming feature -- but there was nothing. Just what you think will happen, happens. It felt like a bad movie, there was never an original idea in the whole novel. The writings about art were dictionary-like, and without any special insights. Frayn wouldn't last a minute as an art history lecturer.
Rating: 
Summary: Enthralling tour de force from a master storyteller
Review: One of my favorite books is An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears. The Pears book is an historical mystery with many facets and a killer of an ending. Headlong traces the consequence of one unethical act, an act that results in destruction and loss, another killer ending. Martin Clay, the protagonist, is a philosopher by training who's a bit jealous of his wife, Kate, an art historian. Both are writing books, but his is beginning to bore him, and he'd like to finesse his wife. As he says several times, her field is iconography, whereas his is iconology. She is an interpreter of icons in art---those symbols artists use to instruct the untutored, but he is the scholar who integrates the whole, who sees not only the symbols, but what the symbols mean in the context of the work of art. In his own mind, Martin's better at what Kate does so ploddingly, never seeing the forest for the trees. Wanting to make a name for himself as the discoverer of a long-lost Bruegel/Brueghel painting, he abandons integrity and even toys with betraying his wife and their life together (they have a baby girl). The Clays have a home in the country to which they've repaired to write their respective books. They are looking forward to three months or more of relative peace and quiet, far from busy, noisy London and their Oswald Street flat. The local lord of the manor, Call-me-Tony Churt, however, seizes upon their knowledge of paintings and art history and asks them to evaluate several canvases he keeps in a cold, dirty, locked room. He needs to know how much hard cash they'll get him so he can fix up his dilapidated holdings. The paintings don't fall within either Martin or Kate's areas of expertise, but the dirtiest of all suddenly hits Martin with a coup de foudre, a clap of thunder. He's sure it's a Bruegel. Martin begins to make a pact with his internal devil, tempting himself with thoughts of money and fame much as the Devil tempted Faust. He goes over to the dark side and begins to craft a plan that will gratify his heart's desire, no matter what happens to his soul in the meantime. This is an enthralling read---I read it in one afternoon---what reviewers call "a page-turner"---and it will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Perhaps not all readers. This is a bookish novel, and if one is thrilled by the hunt of research into arcane areas and intrigued by intellectual pursuits that include the history of art as well as European history in general, this is definitely for that person. There are some tantalizing almost-sexy segments, but the joy of Headlong is the breathless following of Martin Clay's rapid spin into ultimate self-destruction, headlong, indeed. Some finely drawn minor characters---Kate, the suffering-in-silence neglected wife, the jug-eared art historian John Quiss, the beautiful and restless chainsmoking, gin-swilling Lady Churt, the brutal, charmless Tony, blueblood breeding gone to seed, surrounded by yapping hounds and living in a pit of a once-stately home---and, a truly fabulous creation lurking in the deep, dark shadows of his artistic masterpieces, the enigmatic figure of the little-known Netherlandish painter Bruegel, who may have been rather more than the quiet figure described by later historians of 16th-century Dutch paintings. What were the painter's convictions, and did he set them down deliberately for others to discover while imperiling his own life? Whether or not one buys into Frayn's conclusions, this is a masterly tour de force and highly recommended for those who appreciate literary fiction at its very best.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating life-of-the-mind yarn, with occasional sex
Review: Martin Clay is a young academic philosopher who goes off to the country with his wife (an academic art historian) and infant daughter so they can both work on their current books. The local land-poor squire, an ignorant boor who beats his wife, tries to get a free valuation of some family pictures from them and Martin discovers what he believes to be a long-lost Bruegel -- a find that not only would make his career but would be worth several million pounds. Naturally, he has to possess it. And that draws him into a convoluted (but perfectly believable, earlier reviews of this book not withstanding) scheme to con his neighbor out of the unrecognized masterpiece . . . for the painting's own good, of course. That's the surface story, a very entertaining sort of bedroom farce it is. But Martin's wife, an iconographer who hasn't seen the picture, doesn't for a moment believe it could be what he thinks it is, so Martin must research the attribution -- a quest that takes him and us through the ins and outs of 16th century Dutch and Spanish politics, the Reformation and the Catholic counterattack, and the possible personal trials of the painter himself. I "read" this one on a recent trip via audiobook, read by British actor Robert Powell, and it may be one of those few books that's better listened to than read. Though my art background is minimal, I found the scholarly detective work and Martin's thought processes absorbing. And when I took this back to the library, I immediately went looking for the Bruegel books.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating art history, silly plot
Review: I have such mixed feelings about this book. There's no question that I was completely awed by Michael Frayn's intellectual creativity. The story centers around a lost Bruegel painting that an English academian thinks he's spotted among his boorish and avaristic neighbor's art collection. Frayn does an wonderful job of using the narrator's quest to authenticate the painting as a platform for discussing Netherlandish painting and history. It's all quite impressive, but anyone who doesn't have a love of art history is likely to find themselves getting bogged down in some of the theoretical aspects. Even though Frayn does a fine job describing Bruegel's known works, it might be very interesting to read "Headlong" with a copy of a book showing Bruegel's work sitting beside you.My reservations about the book come from the rest of the plot which concerns the narrator's efforts to buy the painting without alerting its owner to its true value. Yes, I know that the silly situations and outlandish schemes were supposed to be funny, but I personally found it so unbelievable that this very smart person would behave in such an outrageously stupid manner that it was more annoying than funny. The farcical elements would undoubtedly have been more palatable if there hadn't been such a complete dichotomy between the incredibly sophisticated academic analysis and the silly plot. It's frustrating because I think the whole scenario would have been funnier if the author had exercised a little more restraint.
Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to like this book but didn't succeed
Review: This book does have some lovely writing in it. There are moments when I thought, "ah, at last, this is going to get good" and then two pages later I was back to feeling bored and antsy. The writing is clever in some spots and very funny but overall, those bright spots just aren't enough. There are interesting moments such as the lessons given about art history but Frayn goes into them in far too much detail such that they become boring and tedious. The characters tend to do things which are unbelievable several times over and in the end, I only finished it because it was for my bookclub and I was the one who made the recommendation to begin with.
Rating:
Summary: Fiction Vies With Non-Fiction
Review: Half of this novel is hilarious; the rest of it is quite serious. It's a strange, schizophrenic combination, that concerns a picture that Martin Clay sees in his country neighbor's home. The neighbor thinks it is junk, but Martin thinks he has found a work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. If he can correctly discover its provenance he hopes to buy the painting for a pittance, and then resell it for a small fortune. Martin's subsequent adventures with the rather uncouth neighbor, his flirtatious wife, and the London art world are hectic, bizarre, and above all quite funny. Now comes the qualification. About half of the book's text is taken up with Martin's library research concerning Bruegel, his paintings, and late 16th century Netherlands history. Now I am interested in both art history, and medieval history so I was quite intrigued by all of this. But if you are not of a similar mind, you might object to several antic escapades being interrupted for another lesson in the history of Bruegel's paintings. If you don't like art lessons can you skip through the pedantic parts? Well, I don't know. If you don't like boxing can you skip the fight scenes in Rocky? I'm rating it four stars, because I liked both components of the book. You'll have to decide for yourself if you are in the mood for Art History 101.
Rating:
Summary: Farce + art history = what???
Review: Michael Frayn's book is a good read but uneven. The story of Martin Clay's sudden obsession with his neighbor's possibly valuable painting is funny in the manner of Frayn's stage farces--wacky car chases, mistaken identities, lovers hidden in closets, etc. Interspersed with the farce are lengthy detailed passages in which Martin picks apart in detail the political environment of 16th-century Netherlands in hopes of identifying whether "his" painting is by the famed painter Bruegel. I found this part quite interesting but disruptive in tone from the farce (16th-century Netherlands was apparently tragically oppressive, full of religious persecution, torture, etc.). These passages are so long and involving that it becomes a bit hard to follow the farce that surrounds it. It would have worked better for me if I had bought into Martin Clay's motivation for doing what he does. It's not clear why a philosophy professor (the main character) would suddenly develop either an art-history fixation or an interest in defrauding his neighbor of a valuable painting. It's all quite entertaining but rather unbelievable. Overall I found the whole less than the sum of the parts.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting art history, but the comedy wasn't great
Review: A couple from London are at their country home for the summer (they are both professors - he of philosophy, she of art history). They are invited to the house of one of their neighbors for dinner, and asked to appraise some paintings they're thinking of selling. The husband (the main character and narrator of the story) thinks one of the paintings (held in low regard by the couple) is actually a long-lost painting by Bruegel, a Netherlandish painter of the mid-1500's. The painting may be part of a series of six (or more) paintings depicting characteristic activities of the peasants during the year, only five of which are currently accounted for (in real life - this novel does try to stick to the historical facts). About one-third of the book's text advanced the plot of how the main character was going to get his hands on this painting, and the rest was a narrative of his research into Bruegel and the time he lived to try to find hints that could help him prove this was actually the lost painting he thought it was. I found the part that advanced the plot to be less than enthralling; the characters came across as rather slimy and the events just left a bad taste in my mouth; the humor just didn't work for me. However, the part describing the art history and political history of Bruegel's times was interesting, and it was intruging to see how a real historian could go about doing his research into a lost work of art.
Rating:
Summary: What a frolic!
Review: 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.
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