Michael Frayn Critical Essay | Critical Review by Peter Bien

Critical Review by Peter Bien

SOURCE: Bien, Peter. Review of Headlong, by Michael Frayn. World Literature Today 74, no. 2 (spring 2000): 364.

In the following review, Bien describes Headlong as “urbane and funny,” but comments that some readers may find the academic and research portions of the book to be tedious and uninteresting.

Some readers crave an edition of Moby Dick with the descriptions of whaling deleted. Likewise, some readers may crave an edition of Headlong with the art-history passages deleted. The novel's protagonist, Martin Clay, thinks he has discovered a long lost Bruegel covered with soot. So he spends hours in the London Library researching the subject in books such as Réau's Iconographie de l'art chrétien and Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic. His scheme is to pay the owner the modest sum of about £100,000 (the painting's alleged importance kept secret, of course) and then to sell the work for a million...
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