SOURCE: Jensen, Hal. “Reading the Pictures.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5029 (20 August 1999): 19.

In the following review, Jensen asserts that Frayn's treatment of the protagonist's relationship with his wife in Headlong is the book's main asset, but faults the novel for lacking substantial characters, memorable description, and for a disappointing and contrived plot.

Headlong into what? Reproduced on the jacket of Michael Frayn's new novel [Headlong] is Bruegel's painting “The Fall of Icarus”, and certainly this work deals with the adverse consequences of rash ambition; but the picture is reproduced in a strange perspective, which is meant to alert us, I think, to the actual canvas of “The Fall”, for this is also a story about the history, value and identification of art—Bruegel's in particular. These themes are brought together by Frayn through an account of the perils associated with academic research: the life-excluding obsession with what can be...