Social media, which has made everyday life performative, is obsessed with authenticity. Over 220 pages Nicola Barker picks apart this contradiction in a novel of forensic skill and calm observation. The titular TonyInterruptor is a heckler at an improved jazz gig, whose shout of ‘Is this honest? Are we being honest here’ explodes online and in the lives of the quartet of urbanites Barker bases her novel around. Jazz player Sasha’s caustic response only lands him in further trouble, and a constellation of characters: India the teenager who posts the first footage online; Fi the aloof ‘Queen of Strings’, India’s well-meaning but square father Lambert, and his force-of-nature wife Mallory, join in the navel-gazig, micro-judging and like counting that ensues.

All of them share a pathological sensitivity to inauthenticity that is the key engine of Barker’s comedy: where having a cigarette or a coffee needs analysing for how such actions appear, and can be justified. Against this minutely examined existence the second half of the novel sets a series of romantic escapades, as the dopamine rush of attraction and seduction lead to rash, spontaneous and deeply unexamined actions.

Barker is never in less than complete control, and while at times you’ll be exasperated at the contortions the characters go through to justify themselves to each other, and well themselves, this is hoot.

Nicola Barker is one of those novelists who has an immense, cemented following. TonyInterruptor is her latest novel, bearing her signature cleverness and exploring the birth of a viral moment with a long-lasting, far-reaching voice that shouts and screams in your ears, reverberating the cochlea with a cacophonic banshee scream. The premise reflects simplicity made complex through Barker’s narrative style and prose. Sasha Keyes is a prominent jazz trumpet soloist performing for a crowd of jazz music lovers when suddenly a man with a deep, hypnotic, honest voice interrupts Keyes’s solo improvisation, asking if all this is honest; if Sasha Keyes is honest. What follows is the viralisation of a tweet/social media post featuring TonyInterruptor’s sincere question. People are differently affected by this question (are you being honest?), creating a series of events connected to that viral moment. TonyInterruptor is a commentary on sincerity, honesty towards others and especially ourselves. The characterisation is superb and remains the bridge of the novel. Through much babbling and meandering, jumping from character to character, Barker explores themes of authenticity, ownership, social media, adultery, neurodivergency, and many others. This is a book full of ideas, commentaries, and points of view that convey the author’s intention, capturing the essence of a jazz band (much happens at the same time at different paces, forming into jazz music). Some old tropes made my eyes roll, and too much wordiness to make a point, and perhaps this was the point. I honestly enjoyed Barker’s narrative style, but I hoped for a more innovative and engaging novel. I am still not sure I enjoyed reading this book, and mirroring my first sentence in this review, this book could have benefited from more concise prose. TonyInterruptor will please many readers of literary fiction who enjoy witty/sharp narrative, with unlikable characters that worry too much, have too much to say, and spend more time discussing the whys instead of acting upon them.

Nicola Barker’s TonyInterruptor is as delightfully disordered as its name implies.

The story opens at an improvisational jazz performance, where trumpet player Sasha Keyes is abruptly interrupted mid-show by an audience member. The moment is caught on camera, goes viral, and the interrupter is swiftly dubbed TonyInterruptor by a disgruntled Keyes. From there, absurdity and chaos ripple outward.

The plot twists and turns in unpredictable leaps—sudden flashbacks, sharp digressions, and tangents that read like free-form jazz riffs translated into prose. The figure of TonyInterruptor, or John Lincoln Braithwaite as he is truly known, is a brilliant embodiment of chaos itself: he unsettles the flow, exposes uncomfortable truths society would rather ignore, and does so with biting wit and humour.

As a reader, I felt swept up in a whirlwind of clever dialogue and madcap scenes, where chaos becomes a kind of performance art in its own right. This was my first experience of Nicola Barker’s work, and I’d be fascinated to see how her other novels carry this same energy.

Overall this was an enjoyable read for me, and something different to what I would usually reach for.

TonyInterruptor is a short novel that delves into the lives of various artists and their families following an interruption at a jazz gig by Sasha Keyes. Each of the characters undergoes some soul-searching and changes throughout the book leading to some surprising pairings.

I'm afraid this book left me cold and bewildered. I didn't find any of it funny except the first interruption. I suppose the people are meant to be caricatures but none of it landed for me.

I confess to having misread the blurb and thought the story would focus on the original "heckler" but instead it probed into the complicated lives of those affected by the interruption. I'm afraid it did nothing for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Granta Publications for the advance review copy.

The style almost stream of consciousness with punctuation, eccentric, literary – plenty of academics and intellectuals demonstrating their prowess with the wonderful world of words. The storyline somewhat obscure till quite a way into the book, there are some splendid social observations – adults versus children/teens for instance – and readers will love it or hate it.

I like what this is going for, and I may return to it in the future, but the humour is just a bit too dry for me, and there’s a few too many side characters to keep track of.

OK, so this is a seriously funny and utterly mad but wonderful short novel. I've never seen so many ellipses in one place.. When a man stands up and heckles the musicians at a live jazz concert, asking 'Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?', we're led into a world of social media, art, music, relationships and authenticity. A difficult novel to summarise so I won't try. But some of the flights of fancy are hilarious, laugh out loud funny..
One character, Lacey '(shudders to think how Punks or Goths would've managed in the cultural wastelands of the seventies and eighties without those trusty, dusty old Christians to define themselves against. Yet now... kids are compelled to grub around and find their spiritual consolation at Hogwarts, with the Vikings, or among the deliciously gender fluid Greeks. . . )

A delicious mixture of zany madness.. cleverness and emotional intelligence makes TonyInterruptor unique.

AN INTIMATE free jazz gig is probably one of the places you would expect a person with artistic pretentions to offer their opinions on the musical proceedings. Such critique and criticism are usually reserved for muttering to a fellow audience member in a lowered tone, however, or saved until the full considered takedown can be extolled in great measure afterwards, over a carafe of full-bodied red or a well-aged whiskey.

At the start of TonyInterrupter, an audience member soon after identified as John Lincoln Braithwait, an art curator, speaks up during an innocuous point in the jazz gig to ask “Is this honest? Are we being honest here?”

The reaction to the question is what you’d expect – insulted fury from Sasha Keyes, the leader of the ensemble who had been in the middle of a trumpet solo, general amusement from the rest of the musicians, whose relationship with their leader is fractious, titillated excitement from the other audience members who sense a “moment” about to be memorialised.

Backstage, after the gig, it emerges that the interruption has been caught on video by a teenager who has attended the concert with her father and dutifully uploaded it to her social media account. The video goes quickly viral, as does a companion video filmed backstage by one of the band members, documenting Sasha’s enraged reaction to the infraction, during which he dubs the man “some dickweed, small-town TonyInterruptor…”

The exchanges between the band members, who each make no effort to hide their opinions of each other, are genuinely laugh out loud, with author Nicola Parker perfectly capturing the self-satisfied one-upmanship of pretentious opinion. The band delights in Keyes’ over-the-top reaction, and further poke the bear by offering defences of the interruption, with some arguing that it has become a piece of radical art.

After the concert, Lambert and Mallory Shore, father of India, a professor of architecture and Mallory, his wife, deconstruct the events of the night leading to heated discussions, induced by long simmering resentment, about TonyInterrupter’s lofty behaviour on encountering an excited Lambert after the show and India’s teenage arrogance in proclaiming her PhD father and trained barrister stepmother idiotic.

The chapters mostly consist of very long dialogues between characters, that either progress the minimal plot, discuss philosophical quandaries or go over the types of personal affronts that tell you so much about a personality. While the passages are hugely entertaining and often very funny, they are also very long, and require a very focused headspace to enjoy in full.

In its 224 pages, TonyInterrupter challenges the reader in a sardonic, wry and witty way to consider their feelings about art, culture and intellectual ownership. Using conversation between rivals, lovers, parents and children, complete strangers, Parker unpicks so much more than just the general topic of aesthetics, but also how opinions and ideas can shift and be moulded, depending on circumstance, on influence, on current points in time.

It is divided, unequally, into two parts, with the first taking place during and in the days after the TonyInterrupter incident, the second, shorter part taking up the story, of sorts, three years later. The incident proves a catalyst for an immense sea-change in the lives of those affected, both directly and because they’ve inserted themselves into the situation, and the conclusion is almost surreal, vibrant and weird and completely satisfactory.

During the course of the book there are references and allusions to philosophical theories, robust and half-hearted, or forced by delusional self-confidence, and there are arguments and discussions with no hope of being resolved. It is the interaction that is key, exploring how art in its many forms can truly offer profundity to a life, and even change it, for better or for worse.

It begs a thoughtful approach to it, like the art installation that appears in the latter half of the book, and the amount of whip-smart prose will leave you exhausted after taking the due care to consider its many discussion points. Honesty, integrity, authenticity in this modern world defined by likes on social media – it will leave you thinking about it for days.

TonyInterruptor is an incredibly funny and intellectual read. It challenges any thought it puts forward itself. Barker constantly questions the characters’ thoughts through their own questions concerning reality, life, family, love, and normalcy.

Often times maybe a bit too intellectual. But the humor brings you back every single time. Not a book for everyone (just like every book ever), but delightful for those it is meant for.

This book whilst did at first hold my interest was a DNF as just found the writing style too much and never found myself relaxing with the book or able to connect with it

Clever, sarky, cerebral bantz about it all, but nothing for the heart. DNF

I have tried, many years ago, to read another book by Barker, but was left wearied and cold. In theory, this sounded interesting but there is a gulf mismatch between this author and this reader.

Novels where only my head, get engaged are never for me. This FELT to me, too knowing, too superior, too mocking about it all, too cool, and too style focused. Substance clearly IS being found by those who appreciate this, but, as I trudged disconsolately through, waiting to find some involvement, some connection to characters feeling real, rather than attitudinal types, I could not find much substance, I gave up at 10%. Life being far too short, and there being too many books to read which will grab me, head, heart and viscera.

Publication date: 14th August 2025. Prediction: this could very well make the Booker Prize longlist (or even shortlist). Why? It's very 'literary', centring around a moment in an improvised jazz concert where a man (John Braithwaite/#TonyInterrupter) stands up and asks 'are we being honest?' India Shore, one of the band (in the loosest sense) member's daughters is filming the entire thing and it goes out to her quarter of a million followers on Instagram, and the whole thing goes viral. What follows is a meandering exploration of what happens after this viral moment, and the ramifications for a surprisingly wide number of people.

Why does this make it Booker material? Well, like I said: it's 'literary' (lots of philosophical ramblings that go nowhere). It's 'clever' - making a book centre around a single moment (as well as the supposedly 'clever' conversations). It's hyper current, attempting to capture something of the online zeitgeist of snapshot events being endowed with more 'meaning' than they ought to have. It's trying 'something different', although it doesn't really feel that different at all...

I think if you've read this far you'll probably have surmised (correctly) that I didn't enjoy this book. There was some interesting characterisation, a few micro isolated funny moments and... a whole lot very heavily-worded chaotic, well, filler. The interesting characters/relationships did not make up for the 'freestyle' and 'improvisational' splurge of writing that made up the majority of the book.

Critics and fans will no doubt argue that I've missed the point, that this is 'conceptual art' and 'post post modern' and that kind of thing. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to enjoy my books as well as see that there is something 'interesting' about them.

TonyInterruptor begins with a simple enough set-piece: at a provincial jazz night, the quintessential British jazzer Sasha Keyes and “his Ensemble” are playing when their set is interrupted, not by your average heckler but by a character who seems to want to start a serious philosophical conversation, asking “Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?”. His interruption is filmed by a Gen Z attendee, India Shore, and this video (along with another detailing a backstage interraction between the band in which the character is mockingly referred to as “TonyInterruptor”) goes viral on social media. The book explores the impact of this moment in time, and its online aftermath, on a small group of characters including Keyes’ bandmates, India Shore’s parents, and the eponymous character himself.

I began this book in an almost frenzied state of excitement. Its epigraph is a quote from Mark E. Smith about the intoxicating powers of blue cheese. It continues in an appropriately irreverent, anarchic spirit. It’s set in the world of music, and manages to both celebrate and mock the worthiness of its most intensely intense characters. Its style is somewhat of another era, willing to land hard satirical punches and seemingly unafraid of causing offence, but its interest is very much trained on the modern era of social media, algorithms and hashtags.

The two characters at the heart of the initial conflict are revealed fairly rapidly to be cut of fairly similar cloth. John Lincoln Braithwaite (our TonyInterruptor) “despises algorithms” and “does not want to be told what to consume […] He senses that culture is a conversation - a series of clumsy nudges and mis-steps - and likes it to be a shock, a revelation […] He must be challenged.” Sasha Keyes sees jazz improvisation as a reaction to the fact that the world is “fucked” and views his role as “honourable… So bollocks to the rest of it. The baaing, the bleating, the digital fucking cacophony… It will pass. It. Will. Pass.” Both initially sound vaguely heroic in their distaste for the ills of the modern world, but both have their own reactionary tendencies too - challenging the woes of the modern world with provocative but ultimately meaningless intellectualism or willing it away in a haze of artistic evasion.

The book is short, and it rapidly shifts focus away from these rather intriguing protagonists into a series of rather less satisfying diversions. Lambert Shore, who took his daughter India to the concert, and is an architecture professor, receives a lot of focus, and while he’s the locus of some pretty funny moments (largely centring on his po-faced and very Gen X lectures on pop culture to his disinterested zoomer daughter) he doesn’t really command any emotional connection beyond that. He’s connected to Keyes through a work relationship with one of his bandmates, and the interruption spurs him down a more artistic path involving a collaboration with her.

This general theme of the event’s impact on its various related characters comes together in the book’s final third, which after a jump in time sees Braithwaite in Paris involved in the production of an art installation by Lambert Shore, who subsequently attends a (less improvisational) concert by Keyes based on his new relationship with Mallory, who left Lambert after a hospital-based moment of revelation at the end of the first section. It’s an odd kind of coda which feels at once overly engineered (“everything and everyone is connected, ooooh”) and also somewhat random.

So, by the book’s end my initial wild enthusiasm had become a little more muted. It’s a book that (like some of its characters) enjoys asking questions, setting up provocations and (it must be said) taking a degree of pleasure in the befuddlement of its audience. I loved it when it was energetically setting off fireworks in this way; but I lost that love a little when it seemed to be trying a little too hard to piece together some sort of meaning from its many fragments.

A thrilling ride at times, so much so that I’m very much compelled to read more by Barker. On a single read, it didn’t entirely hang together for me, but then I’m not entirely sure it was even supposed to… (7.5/10)

At the beginning of Nicola Barker's 'TonyInterruptor', a character stands up and interrupts a jazz concert to confront the artist about honesty in his work. This one moment will impact a group of characters' lives for the rest of the novel. 'TonyInterruptor' is all about how we convey messages and how we interpret the world around us through art. Barker takes aim at the ridiculousness of so much of modern-day social media and how the incessant and meaningless dialogue around one viral video can change people's lives and careers. She skewers that sort of mentality and the results are a comic novel of small, but revelatory moments of characters grappling with ideas of how truth can and cannot fit into artwork.

Barker explores how seemingly small details may seem insignificant in the moment, but reveal so much about a character's personality and their connection to other people. We often spend so much time looking for meaning in subtext. Barker's novel forces us to examine how we manoeuvre
through this new social landscape, especially a landscape that can be quite challenging and in some instances extremely antagonistic towards artists. How do we interpret art in a world where social media controls so much of the way we interact with the world? The moment a piece of art, or a piece of literature is put out into the world there are thousands of interpretations immediately broadcast on Twitter and Instagram. If you have the wrong interpretation, you can feel ostracised.

The character nicknamed TonyInterruptor is all about honesty. Where is the honesty in art? Where is the honesty in how we live our lives? While that might seem lofty or pretentious, Barker's novel is full of humour and empathy. By the end of the novel, you've grown to care about these characters and their relationships. Barker has such a deft way with humour and there's a fantastic chapter in which a drugged-up Mallory interacts with Sasha in a hospital. It becomes the centrepiece of the novel because it highlights how one small instance of human interaction can change how a piece of art is created and the impact it has on other people's lives. Yes, some of the discussions about art and authenticity can border on the tiresome, but that's also true to life. As a reader, I have little tolerance for 'know everything' teenage characters and India in 'TonyInterruptor' is just as annoying, but on the whole I found 'TonyInterruptor' to be a fascinating and amusing look at how this often horrific social media landscape has impacted the way we consume not only art but other human beings.

Nicola Barker's "TonyInterruptor" is an exciting and mind-stretching comedy masterpiece. At its core is the mysterious "TonyInterruptor," a fellow driven to interrupt live cultural performances with a brief, powerful question: "Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?" When one such outburst goes viral, it creates a ripple effect, pulling into his sphere of influence a wildly disparate collection of characters.

The writer masterfully investigates the consequences of this individual incident, following its echoes through the virtual landscape and the lives of the parties. She examines some of the deeper concerns of authenticity, the definition of art, integrity, and the frequently interrupted terrain of our own modern world. With her idiosyncratic prose, her sharp dialogue, and astute observations, the author writes a novel that is as wildly compelling as it is profoundly perceptive. "TonyInterruptor" is a joyful, anarchic romp that makes readers think about the integrity in their own lives and the work they read.

Tony Interruptor is an odd little book. It is highly intellectual and incredibly smart in its humour, playing on words and alluding to artists all around. I am sure I missed many connections. For want of a better word, it is the very definition of highbrow literature.

The starting point is a man who interrupts a jazz concert by asking, "Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?" From there, a TikTok video is created, a hashtag is coined (#TonyInterruptor), and a number of lives are turned upside down by a series of decisions as well as discussions about art, identity, authenticity and improvisation. I think an interest in art and the theory of art helps massively to enjoy this novel, because nothing really happens. People just talk, then talk some more in stream of consciousness style. The characters are close to caricatures, and the final part of the book takes this a step further by juming foreward three years and examining the fundamental changes to several lives caused by one act on one evening.

I enjoyed and appreciated the novel, even though it had no great emotional impact on me, as the characters were just too extreme. I was entertained though - despite my aversion to stream-of-consciousness writing. So, in short, a book that will be loved by the right audience, and might vex anybody else.

I love Nicola Barker, so I'm biased. But even so, this was great fun, and I really hope it gets much deserved awards attention. It's very astute (as you might expect) on inter-generational friction and language barriers/silos/misinterpretation, and it was over all too quickly. Thank you for the opportunity to read it in advance!

What a strange, but engaging read.

I loved the ideas that were touched on, like perceptions of honesty, innovation and improvisation, and even the implied social contract within society, which was compromised with the initial "interruption'.

Something about the fumbling conversations, the half formed thoughts going back and forth, of the characters was compelling, but also made for a bit difficult reading. Like I was eavesdropping on a conversation that was part verbal, part mental and I couldn't quite catch up. Which I ended up enjoying more than expected, given the frustration.

In the middle of a modern jazz session, Tony (the interruptor of the title) stands up and proclaims, ‘Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?’

That’s something a lot of readers will have wondered while sitting through events where you honestly wonder whether anyone is enjoying what is going on, or are they pretending to enjoy it in a slightly pseudo-way, or are they just too timid to walk out? Modern jazz is quite an easy target!

Anyway, the book is about the repercussions of this event, locally in the lives of those who view it or play the instruments, and globally in social media. It is fair to say that a lot of things fall apart as a consequence.

The comedy lies in the way in which this is described so it turns out that even the supporting musicians think that the interruptor has a point! Their trumpet playing leader, Sasha Keyes, does not take kindly to this at first!

Lambert Shore and his daughter India, both members of the audience, are caught up in the debate as is his wife Mallory. They are a buttoned up, slightly arty middle-class family but … are they being honest?

The book is written in an easy comic style with plenty of witty asides. You could easily imagine it being adapted by Radio Four and it may have a serious point about the easy acceptance of the status quo, about literary, artistic and musical snobbery, and possibly even about how we sustain lived reality. It’s not a belly laugh but it is amusing in the way that it exposes the characters and their foibles, revealing the reality beneath.

You’re likely to find yourself in quite a few TonyInterruptor situations after reading this book and that is a recommendation in itself but would you stand up and say so? That’s another issue altogether!

Not for me maybe too intellectual just didn't really like the way it was written but I love the arty cover.