SOURCE: Wood, Michael. “Four Thousand, Tops.” London Review of Books 21, no. 20 (14 October 1999): 22-3.

In the following review, Wood discusses the theme of self-delusion in Headlong, commenting that the book has a fine beginning but loses its momentum when bogged down by the plodding details of the protagonist's research findings.

In Michael Frayn's first novel, The Tin Men, there is a character who is supposed to be writing a novel, but mainly concentrates on devising the blurbs and reviews for the as yet unstarted book, as if the work itself was merely the plodding cause of a glittering celebrity effect, and ideally could be dispensed with altogether. Frayn specialises in this kind of comedy, the mind racing ahead of its occasions and then coming a cropper as the occasions catch up. I'm not sure who else works in this mode at the moment, but the fiction of Laurence Sterne...