Headlong -- Michael Frayn

A small novel, I got this from the British Library.  I read it a couple of months ago, but didn't quite get round to posting anything about it.  To be honest, I'm still unsure of my reactions to it; in retrospect, I guess I'd settle for wry amusement.

Martin Clay and his wife are both learned in art - their exact designations are a topic of debate in the beginning of the book.  He claims to be an art philosopher while she is an art historian.  They both retire to the countryside with their little baby girl, Martin having promised his wife that he would settle down and write a book that would finally be published.  His wife has been concerned with his lack of focus on any one particular career and this 'work'cation aims to bring them both on track.

But Fate has other plans for them.  They come across their neighbor Tony Churt who is obviously wealthy in an understated way, with inherited riches within the walls of his home.  Martin is invited, in a spirit of neighborliness, to assess the worth of a painting that Tony has 'inherited' from his mother, but Martin's eye is caught by another painting, that serves ostensibly as a grate prop, and instinctively identifies it as a Bruegel painting that could be worth several hundreds of thousands of pounds, a fact that Tony himself is blissfully ignorant of.  Martin describes his feelings when his eyes first make contact with this precious treasure, so carelessly left lying about in that house:

Already, somewhere in those first few instants, something has begun to stir inside me. In my head, in the pit of my stomach. It's as if the sun's emerging from the clouds, and the world's changing in front of my eyes, from grey to golden. I can feel the warmth of the sunlight spreading over my skin, passing like a wave of beneficence through my entire body. 

He believes it is a missing link in a series of paintings that Bruegel called 'The Seasons.'  Of course, he must prove that it is actually a Bruegel, a task fraught with extreme difficulties even for a person with honest intentions.

Of course he must keep his discovery from everyone about him, including his wife who believes he is still busy researching material for the book he is to write.  But she soon knows, as a wife does, that something else is eating him from inside.  He eventually confesses and she becomes his willing accomplice in the race to get this painting out in the world at his own terms.

The outcome of the whole escapade is already known to the reader in the beginning of the book:

The circumstances of the discovery are such that I shall emerge not only as a fool but as an object of outrage and horror.

It is clear that it is not an "all ends well" kind of tale.  The rest of the book therefore focuses on the hilarious lengths he goes to obtain this painting, deceiving himself in the nobleness of his actions and the final showdown that robs him of all that he has begun to dream of.  You can't help but sympathize with Martin Clay even after all the rigamarole he goes through, of his own doing.  But at the same time you can't help but feel that he had it coming. 

The start of the story is actually rather boring (there were times when I almost shut the covers and returned the book), but it does pick up pace later on. There's no denying the hilarity of it all.  A tad predictable in its outcome, and with a few tired comic scenes thrown in to hold it all together, but that does not really detract from its overall entertainment value.  I liked the dark comic voice that permeates through the entire book and the protagonist's brutal honesty about his compulsion to act the way he did.  The book did manage to get a few grins out of me and perhaps the ending is fitting after all.  I can see this book done up into a comic movie someday, a pretty package that delivers a few laughs over an hour or two.  But the book itself contains many details about Dutch art and only a true art connoisseur would be able to appreciates all the facts laid out.  As for myself, I just skimmed and skipped through these details to get to the heart of the story. 

Mr. Frayn is a well known writer in the UK.  This is the first book of his that I've read.  I like the whole idea of it, though it could've been edited a bit better, in my opinion.  I can see from other reviews that he has written better comic books such as 'The Tin Men' and 'Sweet Dreams.'  Perhaps I shall relish those better when I can get my hands on them.