Headlong/Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn’s novel Headlong operates on 2 levels. The first is a fiction in which Martin, a philosopher married to Kate an art historian, chances upon a painting of his neighbour in the country which he strongly believes to be a missing Brueghel.
It is worth millions and he starts a complex deceit to acquire it from his neighbour Tony Churt.
The second is the actual story behind Brueghel’s series of seasonal pictures and the history of Netherlands in the sixteenth century.
The two do not really mesh.
The first story is funny, well-observed and the narrative has pace. The second is far too detailed and loses the reader – or at least this one.
Frayn is particularly good at character depiction. The central character Martin is a most unreliable narrator. His efforts to claim the picture are incompetent , delusional and self-justifying.
Tony the possessor of the picture, but probably not legally is a chancer, the mad side of eccentric. He is unhappily married to rich and lascivious Laura. Kate, Martin’s wife is a model of domesticity with their baby Tilda. The fifth character is an art expert John Quiss.
Martin’s plans are severely flawed and Tony outwits him.
He does not sell the Brueghel but a Giordano for £90,000 in cash to a dealer. Quiss identifies the Brueghel. It all ends in a horrendous car crash. The final chapter projects into their futures and there is reveal about the content and meaning of the Brueghel picture.
There is no doubting Frayn’s talent.
Noises off is still regularly performed in theatres.
Another play Copenhagen is widely acclaimed.
Yet for all you have read in this novel and others he is rather too anxious to show off intellectually.
My favorite novel of his – Towards the End of the Morning – is a brilliantly comic portrayal of a newspaper in the last knockings of Fleet Street.
I enjoyed this and would recommend it, especially to art lovers, but it’s not one of his finest works.
