Headlong
Michael Frayn
Shortlisted for the Booker prize. Doreen loves Michael Frayn's writing: very
erudite, lots of interesting content and writes a good story. This is a book
about paintings - the narrator thinks he has found an unknown Breugel. The
owner of the picture is a chinless wonder who owns a huge house and needs to
sell the picture to pay for repairs to the house. The author talks about the
picture in loving detail - Doreen found it frustrating to be reading this
book in a holiday cottage and therefore unable to look at the pictures to
check the details described. There is a (real) mystery about a series of
pictures painted by Breugel and it is not known whether some of them are
missing. This story concerns a possible sixth picture in the series. Book is very entertaining but also very tense - will he manage to buy the picture.
Also very funny - some good jokes.
Doreen 23/7/00
Shortlisted for the 1999 Booker prize, this was a good, old-fashioned romp and Andrew really enjoyed it. The premise is that the main character discovers an undiscovered painting by Peter Breughel.
It is well written, humorous, learned, and cleverly paced - hurtling to disaster at the end.
Highly recommended.
Andrew 8/10/00
This Booker short-listed book had been enjoyed by other members of the
group, however Gill found it boring in the extreme. In fact she commented
that it drove her 'straight back to the Wilkie Collins'. She found really
did not care for the whole middle class academics in library plot line.
Gill 3/11/00
By the same author
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.