A major disappointment...Here we have a perfect example of how a book can affect people in very different ways. Highly recommended by several people whose opinions I value and with whom I often find myself in agreement, I assumed I would love this book. Hmm!When our first-person narrator, Martin Clay, is invited by his cartoonishly-oafish country bumpkin neighbour to look at his art collection, Martin (though hardly an expert) thinks he has spotted a missing Breugel. Martin then plots how to acquire this painting for himself, ostensibly to have the honour of being the one who discovered it, but the two million or so he expects to get for it is a further motivation.There seems to be an unfortunate habit developing amongst authors whereby they do a ton of research and then decide they're going to use it all - every single word - loosely bunging a flimsy plot into the gaps and then calling it a novel. At least sixty percent of this book is Frayn regurgitating the history of the 16th century Netherlands together with everything he could find on Breugel. Not subtly weaving it into the story and not with any redeeming beauty of writing - just pouring it out in a 'Look what I know!' kind of way."On the table in front of me I have Friedländer (of course), Glück, Grossman, Tolnay, Stechow, Genaille and Bianconi. They quote each other freely, together with various other authors not available in the London Library - Hulin de Loo, Michel, Romdahl, Stridbeck and Dvořák - and they refer to the often mutually contradictory iconography used in two breviaries illuminated by Simon Bening of Bruges in the second and third decades of the sixteenth century, the Hours of Hennessy and the Hours of Costa; in the Grimani Breviary, also done, a little earlier, by Simon Bening and his father Alexander Bening, although the calendar itself is attributed to Gerard Horenbout; and in our own dear 'Calendrier flamand', as I think of it, in the Bavarian State Library."The other forty per cent is a fairly unsubtle farce as our unlikeable, intellectually snobbish hero tries to do down his equally unlikeable 'half-educated' neighbours, while trying not to fall out with his enigma of a wife - the woman with the least personality of any fictional character I have encountered. There are some funny moments, but many of the jokes are inviting the reader to join with the author/narrator in laughing at the bumpkins for their ignorance of art and philosophy or in mocking the narrator for his snobbery. This combination means that the whole book has a sneering quality which left me unable to empathise with any of the overblown unattractive characters.Despite the fact that by a third of the way through I began to skip whole sections devoted to presumably partially made-up art history, it still took me the best part of two weeks to plough through the remaining snippets of plot, mainly because I couldn't bear to read any more about the tedious, self-absorbed and yet apparently irresistible-to-women Martin. And since the ending was pretty much inevitable it was hardly a surprise, except in that the author managed to make it more unpleasant than I anticipated by adding in an incident of entirely unnecessary animal cruelty.Sorry to all of you who love Frayn - you're obviously seeing something in this that I'm not...but I'm afraid I found this one a major disappointment and doubt I'll be seeking out any more of the author's work.www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
If I were to take my level of enjoyment in reading this novel as a guide, I would have given it 2 stars or maybe even only one. But given my respect for Frayne as a writer, as a playwright, and as a brilliant thinker, I didn’t want to contribute too much to a downward shift in his stats on Goodreads. I read this book for my book club, which is probably the only reason I read until the very end – although I was curious about how it would end, but furious that I had to suffer through so much frustratingly uninteresting stuff to get there. It starts out well – I found myself laughing out loud at some of the early passages. But then it splits into two quite different stories. In one the first-person narrator schemes to get a painting which he believes to be a Bruegel away from a neighbor. In the second our narrator describes in great detail some very extensive scholarly research on the basis of which he attempts to prove that the painting really is a Bruegel (apparently Frayne actually did this research and incorporated it into the novel). These parts of the novel are interspersed in consecutive chapters, so that the reader is bounced back and forth from one to the other. The Bruegel research includes some interesting tidbits about European history – especially about the Spanish domination of the Netherlands – as well as a lot of detailed discussion of the contents of a series of known Bruegel paintings. I think I would have enjoyed the Bruegel research if it had been presented as a talk with lots of illustrating slides – as it was presented in the book with text only, I found it very hard to keep track of the argument which relied heavily on the actual content as well as the symbolism of the contents of a number of paintings, and how these relate to the historical context in which they were painted.As for the narrator’s schemes to snaffle the painting for himself, one very quickly realises that they are all going to fail, especially as they grow increasingly preposterous, working up to a ridiculous crescendo. I know this was all supposed to be funny, but the humor didn’t work for me – I just got tired of being inside the head of this narcissistic fool, who, moreover was involving himself and his eloquently silent wife in a rather large amount of debt to finance his obsession. Normally I love unreliable narrator plots – this one, however, was mostly tiresome. Also the two parts of the story – the scheming and the Bruegel research – are not a good fit, because in the one we have the machinations of a self-absorbed idiot, who, (in the second part) we are supposed to believe, is capable of doing rather complicated erudite research. It is possible that we are meant to see the obsessiveness of the research as a parody of what academics do, but there was too much earnestly complex detail for me to see it that way.
What do You think about Headlong (2015)?
Headlong is a fun farce with a good dose of European and Art History thrown into the mix. Martin Clay and his wife Kate escape from London to the British countryside to finish academic books. He is a philosopher and she is an art historian. The adventure is set into motion when they are invited to dinner at a country estate. As they are leaving, the host asks for an opinion on some art work. The overwhelming urge to mansplain takes over so that Martin tromps over his wife and makes himself an art expert. This wanker goes on to become a painfully oblivious narrator as he negotiates the fine art world with a Helen of Troy painting while believing he has found an unknown Brueghel.At times I got bogged down in the history, but would later find myself on Wikipedia looking for more detail. I think perhaps I was a reacting to Martin's over explaining. He can be rather unbearable. And that is the point. This is an, at times, uncomfortable immersion into British culture and an art history lecture with a narrator that reminds you of David Brent (British Office). All in all, it is worth the time investment; including the time spent on Wikipedia looking at art.
—Sarah
Half way through 'Headlong' I thought it was one of the most brilliant books I'd read: meticulously researched and slyly constructed to bring about what I'd hoped would become an incredible resolution in the author's art-heist-cum-academic-wet-dream of millions, along with a solid place in art history, and a nice little estate for his wife and baby. Instead, 'Headlong' never emerged from the obsessive research-laden prose, and I began skimming when I could find no semblance of a PLOT driving the narrative forward, rather more and more and more art historical-research grandstanding from the author that, by the end, literally goes up in smoke.IF I'd been one of his early readers, I'd have given him an ultimatum: get your head out of your arse, man, toss the latter part of this novel, and write forward with a strong plot, and then face the possibility of a major literary hit and prizes ... Or produce a wordy, talky book for which some academics and professional writers will obligingly write decent reviews. Thus, a potentially brilliant book is ruined by the author's obsessive monologist-solipsistic narrative style, which he telegraphs to us in a forward setting forth his intentions: to tell the tale as it happens, or as it unfolds, moment by moment. To his credit, the painstaking minutiae of Martin Clay's 'reality' as constructed in the fictional world of 'Headlong' doesn't really begin to crush the reader until the latter part of the book, but when it does it thoroughly annihilated this reader's enthusiasm. (One begins to suspect Frayn actually harbors hostility toward his readers - setting up obstacles to reading pleasure. If this is the case, let me remind Mr. Frayn that literacy is not such a prized skill in our age, and he would do well to write a plot that makes his readers rejoice, rather than grind their teeth.)That said, 'Headlong' must stand as some kind of example for art historians or writers with a love of art, auction houses, and the lives of academics moldering the English countryside. I so wanted to love this book; instead I was rewarded with footnotes, endless bibliographia, and noodle-brained academic clichés.
—Elan Durham
I read this book in a grad class a couple of years ago and loved it! It is very funny. If you like art history, you will like this book. 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.
—Dawn
