SOURCE: Natale, Terri. “Countryside Capers.” New Statesman 12, no. 572 (13 September 1999): 55.

In the following review, Natale describes Headlong as a successful novel that effectively blends farce and social comedy.

Can a master playwright and skilled columnist also produce a successful novel? Can the writer of the award-winning theatrical hits Noises Off and Copenhagen transfer his peculiar talents to another genre? Michael Frayn's first novel in seven years emphatically proves that he can.

Headlong is an intoxicating blend of farce and social comedy—a sustained history lesson on the Spanish conquest of the Netherlands and the 16th-century Dutch landscape painter Pieter Bruegel, and a study of the frailties of the human heart. The plot centres around Martin Clay, our confessional narrator and a philosophy lecturer with an interest in art history, his art historian wife and their baby daughter, Tilda. Clay is struggling to complete a book. To limit distractions, the...