Book 8 - Michael Frayn "Headlong"
Apr. 27th, 2013 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveMichael Frayn "Headlong" (Faber and Faber)
This book was shortlisted for the Booker in 1999, and this was how it caught my attention. I've had it on my to be read pile for at least a year when i found a copy in a chazzer, and now glad I have finally read it.
It mingles literary fiction with art history and some really interesting art analysis.
The plot takes us to England at the end of the twentieth century to the country not far from London, where Martin – a young and awfully wimpy academic, a philosopher and art history specialist, is going to spend a few months in a cottage with his wife, who also specializes in art history, and their three-month-old daughter.
As luck would have it, during a get to know dinner with the neighbouring landowner, Martin thinks he has discovered a long lost Breughel blocking the chimney, and he embarks on a scheme to weasel it out from the owner’s hands without the owner ever suspecting anything. With that the action starts, and a slew of comic events unfolds.
I didn't think I would enjoy this book so much since from the very beginning we know that no new Breughel has recently been discovered, so the whole story must somehow go awry. Still, to his great credit, Frayn managed to keep me interested and even got me more interested as the story went on. He packed a lot of art history into it, as well as history of the Spanish rule in the Netherlands during the times of William of Orange, and created a character that excelled at self-deception.
It all ended up being enjoyable, suspenseful and extremely funny.
This book was shortlisted for the Booker in 1999, and this was how it caught my attention. I've had it on my to be read pile for at least a year when i found a copy in a chazzer, and now glad I have finally read it.
It mingles literary fiction with art history and some really interesting art analysis.
The plot takes us to England at the end of the twentieth century to the country not far from London, where Martin – a young and awfully wimpy academic, a philosopher and art history specialist, is going to spend a few months in a cottage with his wife, who also specializes in art history, and their three-month-old daughter.
As luck would have it, during a get to know dinner with the neighbouring landowner, Martin thinks he has discovered a long lost Breughel blocking the chimney, and he embarks on a scheme to weasel it out from the owner’s hands without the owner ever suspecting anything. With that the action starts, and a slew of comic events unfolds.
I didn't think I would enjoy this book so much since from the very beginning we know that no new Breughel has recently been discovered, so the whole story must somehow go awry. Still, to his great credit, Frayn managed to keep me interested and even got me more interested as the story went on. He packed a lot of art history into it, as well as history of the Spanish rule in the Netherlands during the times of William of Orange, and created a character that excelled at self-deception.
It all ended up being enjoyable, suspenseful and extremely funny.
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