Rating: 
Summary: A wonderfully rich and deeply unified novel.
Review: Michael Frayn's "Headong" an astonishing feat. The chapters about Bruegel and his times are, just in themselves, riveting. I shudderingly read Motley as an undergraduate, when I hadn't heard of Bruegel; but, I confess, in my adult years it never occurred to me to put that painter together with those hideous events. This goes with my having attended mainly to paintings by him that I could read as cheerfully sardonic records of peasant life. After "Headlong" I shall l have to look again, much harder and more warily. The questions about what Bruegel was up to, who protected him, how he survived, and how his paintings figured in all of this - Frayn makes these grippingly exciting, a self-contained thriller within the novel. He does a beautiful job of feeding it into Martin's adventure, through the question of what details in Tony's picture will settle that it's by Breugel. (We are to suppose, I suppose, that Martin hasn't the skill to settle it by brush-strokes and the like.) The initial description of the painting made it seem perfectly real; but by the end of the book it was almost painfully real, because of what we don't know about it as well as because of what we do. It is literally true that I have several times caught myself thinking "I ache to know whether the man's head was tied between his legs". No other book has had quite that effect on me. Frayn's handling of the campaign to get Tony's picture is wonderful fun: the descriptions of situations and relationships and landscapes in terms of Bruegel paintings; the brilliantly funny uses of Lenin's Who-whom? idea; the theory (as it seems to be) about the dominant role of silence in marriage.... It's a superlatively rich and various book, and an amazing tour de force. On the surface and in the centre there is a kind of farce; some of one character's actions are motivated by things he learns from the art-history books; and then those learnings penetrate the farce in all sorts of other ways as well, and give the whole thing a permeating darkness and sadness through all the fun. In its deeply original way, it is also a highly unified book. The "reviewers" who deplored all the scholarship were presumably looking for a romp, not a novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating Premise Mired In Unabsorbing History
Review: I was fascinated by the theme of this book: What lengths will a man go to possess something that he covets? In this case, the object of desire is a painting which the narrator of the tale is convinced is the work of Bruegel, and he is prepared to lie, cheat, and jeopardize his marriage to obtain it. Although I laughed out loud at the narrator's efforts to rationalize despicable conduct, my enjoyment of the story was diminished by (what I deemed) the excessive descriptions of the political and religious forces in the Netherlands in the 16th century that shaped Bruegel's work. It is this detail which, although likely appealing to a reader with a keen interest in art history, significantly reduced the pleasure I derived when reading this novel.
Rating:
Summary: I read this book in a single night. I couldn't put it down.
Review: A new take on the historical novel. Comedy of manners meets art history in a new and novel way. I found myself interested enough in Brugel to pull out an old art history book and gaze at the paintings with new eyes. Great reading!
Rating: 
Summary: Did someone say art class?
Review: I was an art history major in college. I took quite a few classes in art of the Netherlands. This book was funny and light, but I honestly do not know how someone not enchanted by the process of decoding artwork, and specifically the art of the Netherlands, would be able to tolerate this book. By the end even I was skimming over the disertations on political and religious forces shaping Bruegel's life.If you are interested in exploring how addicting the study of art and its context can be, by all means dive right in. If not, dive in as well, and don't feel guilty about skipping the seemingly endless historical chit-chat - it really does not have much impact on the story.
Rating:
Summary: Intellectual Property
Review: "Headlong" is a very entertaining sort of novel that revolves around a wonderful plot device: a man finds, in his boorish neighbor's house, a neglected painting be believes may be a lost Bruegel. The rest of the novel revolves around his plot to confirm the painting's identity and to steal it from the undeserving neighbor. Frayn does a remarkably good job of showing how protagonist Clay, while neglecting his own philosophical scholarship, engages in his quest to confirm the painting's authenticity, and the history and art history are mixed in fast and furiously. The novel becomes one of those intellectual mysteries in which the clues are scholarly details, and this material is handled remarkably well, and I learned a great deal about Dutch political and aesthetic history. This aspect of the story, however, is hung on a less effectively executed plot to free the painting from its undeserving owner. If the book drags at times it is not because it gets bogged down in history, it is because it doesn't bog itself down sufficiently in the present. I would have liked to have seen the characters fleshed out a bit more, motives made clearer, and the emotional investments of the characters made more real. Ultimately, however, "Headlong" is an effective and engaging read.
Rating:
Summary: SLY MIX OF ART, GENIAL APLOMB AND LATE-NIGHT CHASES..
Review: This is the first time I've read Frayn, but his high-tea civilised comic intelligence is reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse. The wit that encases Headlong is not in the laugh-out-loud, satirically savage league of Sedaris or Rakoff, but it manages to hold its own in the bittersweet and ironic department. Plotwise, there isn't exactly too much adipose. Our urban protagonist, a philosophy lecturer with an interest in art history, camps up in his country cottage to cope with a writer's block, meets a rich but rural landowner and his younger wife (bundles of urban-rural barbs), finds at their house what we are led to believe is a collector's item unbeknownst to the landowner, and sets out on a frantic process of discovery to authenticate this potentially pricey work of art and steal it from his host. Troubles ensue. The wife of the landowner is enlisted as an accomplice in the grand heist plan. Oodles of action, clinched by a chase sequence at the end. While not something I'd read again (I am told Frayn's "Sweet Dreams" is better) Headlong is certainly a pleasant book that chugs along with a genial step. Very decent light-reading material to accompany you on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Rating:
Summary: A Comical/Historical/Esthetical/and Wholly Delightful Novel
Review: "Headlong" is a confession by the narrator of his failed plan to secure, identify, and present to the nation a long-lost painting by Pieter Breugel. Not entirely failed -- for a brief time at the end he does secure it -- but the rest of his plan comes to naught, as the reader knows it must, for Martin tells us in the prologue that he will come to look ridiculous. Martin's failure is the reader's fun, however. His descriptions of his country neighbor's seething mass of friendly dogs, the neighbor's forward wife, his own scurryings about the neighbor's house in an attempt to examine the painting are the top level of pleasure in this novel. The next level is more serious: a consideration of the circumstances of Breugel's life, his fears, the hidden meanings of his paintings. Frayne makes Martin's excursions into the bloody history of the Netherlands and the conditions of art production just as interesting as the adventures of his protagonist. "Headlong" is in places laugh-out-loud funny; it has tender moments of marital affection; it has intellectual detective work and art interpretation. It is my favorite novel of 1999.
Rating: 
Summary: Very funny in parts
Review: This is my first Frayn novel, which I bought after reading the recent profile of the author in The New Yorker. I feel ambivalent about it: I read through this quickly, and I'm encouraged to read other Frayn novels, yet I wouldn't recommend this one very strongly. Though I'm mainly a nonfiction reader, I found the endless digressions into the main character's researches mostly boring. The good: Frayn is a wonderfully fluent writer, and parts are quite funny. The book reaches a peak of humor about two thirds of the way through, when the comedy of errors reaches a ripe pitch, and it made me laugh out loud more than once. But the ending is way too Hollywood for me, shoot-'em-up and smash-'em-up, and I hate the fact that we never find out...! I won't say what, so as not to ruin the book for those who haven't read it yet. Those who have read it know what I'm talking about.
I intend to try a couple of the author's other books. I wouldn't recommend starting on this one, although...(my ambivalence again) I'm not sorry I read it.
Rating:
Summary: Whether Thrilling Comic or Comic Thriller, a Darn Good Read
Review: "Headlong," by Michael Frayn, neatly tugs at your funnybone while tossing you on a roller-coaster of duplicity, intrigue, and action . . . and throws a good deal of Dutch Art Criticism in for good measure.
Martin, our "hero," is a middling academic on sabbatical to the countryside in a desperate attempt to finish what is sure to be a long-ignored work on "nominalism." What Martin lacks in style, panache, or apparently many other worthy attributes, he more than makes up for in pell-mell scholarship and an eye for minutiae.
In a scene reminiscent of "The Irish R.M.," Martin finds himself being asked for his opinion on various paintings by the scruffy country lord, Tony Churt, of a scruffy country estate. In a flash, Martin believes he spies an unknown painting by the Dutch master Bruegel, currently being employed as a chimney-stop. Soon Martin is engaged with himself in a furious battle of rationalization as he becomes consumed with the notion of swiping it from Churt's grubby hands and making millions off it, all without Churt's knowledge. Which is difficult, because Churt is desperate for money and has a nose for treachery, being a treacherous sort himself.
What ensues is a hilarious tale of duplicity, half-truths, a stretched marriage (Kate, Martin's suffering wife, labors away unsuccessfully as Martin's conscience), pathetic overtures for infidelity, and a torrent of art criticism. Through it all, Frayn writes exceedingly well, evoking just the right amounts of panic, triumph, guilt, shame, horror, and self-satisfaction to make Martin a loveable schmuck.
Along the way, Martin offers a highly entertaining and insightful dissertation on iconography and Dutch history, and at the end of the day, "Headlong" conveys a lot of information along with smiles, chuckles, and outright guffaws.
"Headlong" is the perfect title for this work, and you will enjoy turning the pages as Martin dives headlong into this crazy world of art and the double-cross.
Rating:
Summary: Satirical farce and historical mystery
Review: In his previous works, including the plays "Copenhagen" and "Noises Off" and the novel "The Trick of It," Frayn has proved himself an expert at meshing two or more disparate genres into unique hybrids. With "Headlong," he's done it again: merging satirical farce and historical mystery--the sort of novel P. G. Wodehouse and Umberto Eco might write together.
The plot is nothing short of brilliant in conception and nearly perfect in execution. Martin Clay, a professor of philosophy, and his wife Kate, an art historian, have gone on a sabbatical at their country home. "We don't want to drive 100 miles out of London only to meet people who have driven 100 miles out of London to avoid meeting people like us." (Frayn is a master of the quotable quip.) Martin has procrastinated writing a book on a topic that sidesteps a bit into his wife's field--both his delays and his turf-crossing are sources of tension between the two--but the couple soon encounter a new and imposing distraction: the neighbors. The initial meeting, a side-splittingly funny dinner between the frumpish academics and two not-so-bright members of the rural gentry ("My God, I've never met a philosopher before"), is as funny as anything Wodehouse ever penned.
There's a catch to the dinner invitation: the neighbors have a few paintings that they'd like the two "experts" to examine, just to see if they just might be worth anything. The first is by an Italian artist named Giordano. (Here Frayn makes his first mistake: anyone who knows much about the art world will know instantly that this one's not as insignificant as the author wants you to believe.) The second and third seem to be unremarkable 17th-century Dutch canvases. After his wife leaves the room, Martin views the fourth painting and is convinced that it's the missing panel from the six ''Seasons'' paintings by the Flemish master Bruegel--a work that, if it exists, would be priceless and instantly famous.
Now, there is absolutely no record of what this Bruegel might even look like, but that doesn't stop Martin from falling "headlong" into a comedy of errors. He embarks on a scheme to convince his wife (and himself) of the validity of his initial surmise and to "relieve" the owners of their possession in exchange for a small payment that is still high enough risk everything that Martin and Kate own. At this point, the farcical comedy turns intellectual mystery, as we read summaries of Martin's research on Bruegel's life and work, sixteenth-century Netherlands, the Inquisition, the Counter-Reformation, and more. Admittedly, some readers might find all these "facts" a drag on the story, but I think Frayn skillfully weaves the elements of the mystery and the historical detail with the themes of his satire and the various plot elements (including his depiction of the Clays' marriage). If you love history and art--even (or perhaps especially) if you don't know a thing about Bruegel--the payoff is especially keen.
The only false note is the portrayal of Martin's wife. Although Martin himself is a buffoon--perhaps too much so--it's easy to visualize the type of stubborn, myopic know-it-all Frayn means to lampoon. Kate, however, is little more than a plot device--a compliant marshmallow who accommodates her husband's tomfoolery without offering much in the way of resistance. She's hard to imagine and impossible to believe, and if the author means to aim his barbs at a particular target, it's lost on me.
Although the ending is a little more than predictable, it's still both hilarious and satisfying. But "Headlong" isn't a book you read simply for the unfolding of the plot and the solution to the mystery; instead, its main satisfaction is the cerebral stimulation offered by the author's adroitness at linking all the loose ends and the many disparate themes. And, after you're done, you'll probably want to buy a book on Dutch art history.
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