“Engage with the true... true substance of the thing? Stop framing everything in terms of ART and IDEAS and MEANING, stop communicating only in GESTURES and SYMBOLS, stop always making everything so ... so INTELLECTUAL, SO META, and just... just ... for once in your life risk being real?”
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In a way this quote sums up this book perfectly. It is amusing in parts, the gentle skewering of middle class pretensions around art and culture. It is also I guess pretty smart, perhaps bordering on pretentious?
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Truth be told, I didn’t get it. Perhaps I’m simply not au fait with this world or fully understanding the concepts outlaid at times in wittily written sentences. It felt like being on the outside of an in-joke. An in-joke from the cool group of kids at school, who like dissecting in infinitesimal ways language, high art and perpetually on the hunt for authenticity.
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Perhaps it’s those people that the book is gently mocking, a fact that didn’t particularly land with me. It’s all very clever and knowing, a wink and nod. I enjoyed Barker’s quality of writing, and there were parts that did make me chuckle. This just left me a bit cold, alongside adolescent flashbacks of never quite fitting in with the arty cool kids at school.

I’m new to Nicola Barker, so this was a bit of an experiment. A very worthwhile one as it turned out. Intriguing characters and situations, gorgeous prose, and an oh so true reflection on the inside of the the head commentary that all of us have going on as we stumble through life, navigating work, culture, relationships and family. Not for those who want a conventional linear narrative, but perfect if you value novels that resonate long after the reading.

This was the first book by Nicola Barker that I have read, and I'm still not completely sure what I think of it. Yes, the writing is clever and the premise is philosophical,. but I never really got invested in the story. I struggled to like any of the characters and found the going tedious at times. There were big chunks of dialogue with no plot movement and a couple of times I almost gave up before I got there in the end.
Maybe this one wasn't for me and I might try another of hers at some point.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the set up of this book and the writing is entertaining and eloquent. However the premise felt a little laboured at times and I lost interest in the threads. Modern and chaotic, the book will appeal to readers who enjoy literature that shares challenging conversations.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

I will be honest here because, can we be honest? Yes. we can.
This is a fun read which is layered, rich, and full of cultural references.
There is a jazz concert in the beginning, and then something happens, and that changes everything.
Cleverly written with interesting and competent prose.

An indulgent and comic exploration of the oddities of modern society! Loved it!

TonyInterruptor as yet unnamed stands up in the middle of the gig and asks the question: ‘Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?’

The man then points to the trumpet player, Sasha Keyes, and finishes his disruption by commenting, almost pityingly 'You, especially'. The interruption takes people by surprise, this man doesn't appear to be your ordinary heckler.

This disruption is caught on video, posted on social media and goes viral. The book 'TonyInterrupter', is the fall out of the disruption - the tussle and tumble of the characters that try to each understand themselves and each other in the ensuing aftermath.

Nicola Barker has such fun with her subjects, twisting their situations and rollicking in their discomfort. I won't list all the characters, because much of the enjoyment is the reveal of each new person and how they are connected through this event. But to Sasha Keyes who is singled out by the Interrupter, there is this delightful description from the view of his Manager:

'She feels now - and has always felt - that Sasha is an extremely unpredictable and intermittently vicious clinically obese 17-year-old Rottweiler with mesmerizingly yellow teeth and advance arthritis living inside the body of an inordinately pale and skinny 45-year-old suit model with a powerful jaw, giant hands and Supermanstyle spectacles (whose only real purpose, surely, are to be hurled off during a life-and-death crisis). '

At first I puzzled about how this would look, but by reading on, Sasha displays himself and the embodiment of his inner unpredictable Rottweiler leaps from the page.

While I thought the characters were great fun, I really enjoyed the exploration of so many oddities of our modern society. They are not deeply analysed but lightly played upon, and the question is clearly established - why do these oddities exist, and how did they become so profound? What is authenticity and originality in music... or art? Do the origins of a hashtag matter? In a world of spontaneous videos who is the owner of the content? How should one handle disgrace in the face of the media? And with everything in the world being comically odd, why do we try and hold our human forms rigidly to some societal expectations and not others?

Nicola Barker has a different way of looking at the world which is full of punch and relish. Smiling at one pertinent observation, and trying to pause to enjoy, you are careened into another. It is a roller coaster. And sadly, in my view, over too quickly. She is a unique voice!

I demolished this book in just over two days. It has been 18 years since I finished 'Darkmans' and I am now realising that it is too long and I'll certainly be seeking out her other books. Thank you so much #NetGalley and #GrantaBooks!

I'm afraid I only pressed on with this book because it was relatively short.
The phrase 'art for arts sake' kept running through my mind as I read.
I enjoy books with great characters and a plot, so this really wasn't for me, despite being a qualified English Teacher. It really was too literary for me. It raised the occasional smile but no real enjoyment.
Thanks to NetGalley the author and publisher for the opportunity to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found the premise of "TonyInterruptor" to be fascinating. The protagonist seeks to question honesty and integrity in how we live our lives, which results in some profound self-reflections and learnings by the other main characters. I read this just after having a conversation with a colleague at a charity I volunteer for, about how we always say we are "fine" or "good" but that doesn't reflect the hidden depths or challenges that we have running through our lives - which led to a much deeper conversation and connection. Authenticity in a world that is fast-moving with social media, and a multitude of connections (some closer than others) is something to think about!

This was my first book by Nicola Barker and I would read others of hers as I enjoyed this one.

Thanks to Nicola Barker, Granta Books and NetGalley for this ARC in return for an honest review.

An extremely erudite book. One that I can imagine English Literature undergraduates discussing until the early hours.
I enoyed some of the badinage, but generally it was over my head.
Buy it if you enjoy arguing minor points of meaning of words and phrases, as it is common nowadays, and are always using google on your mobile phone to check everything that someone says.
Bang up to date with the arguments. Interesting , but not for my taste particularly nice charcters.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A wryly funny novel in which a man who interrupts a concert inadvertently becomes a social media sensation and the lives of those he touches begin to unravel. This is smart, dry as a bone and gorgeous. I loved it.

This is a review of TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker. The novel opens on an improvisational jazz performance, where the eponymous Tonyinterruptor(a going by the initials JLB) brings a halt to proceedings when asking “Is this honest?” A social media brouhaha ensues with the small cast of characters all affected in deep and lasting ways by the fallout.
JLB is brought to recognisable life in a few short sentences -“He is respectful of books in the way that he is respectful of people, and in the way that he is not of live music performances. Why is this?It’s unknown. It’s a mystery.Although there will be a reason, surely?
Some triggering experience that taught him that it was important to leave( or politely-always politely- object to)a live event if something feels vaguely’off’”.
Similar in tone but smaller in scale to Caledonian Road, and therefore much easier to follow, this is a cutting and highly amusing satire, which gallops along through the array of those connected by the performance, allowing the reader to enjoy a skewering of Woke constraints.
I would say this is for lovers of beautifully constructed arguments, and character development(with the characters being universally wonderfully awful) rather than plot.
I raced through this with gleeful abandon and will look for other titles by this author.

Nicola Barker is one of the truly unique voices in British fiction, and a new novel from her is always welcome. She is very playful, postmodern and often very funny. TonyInterruptor starts with a man standing up at a jazz concert and asking "Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?" This moment, which goes viral, changes the lives of everyone involved. For this to suggest there is a detailed plot here, though, would mislead. Barker is like a jazz musician, freestyling, riffing on a theme. TonyInterruptor is another triumph from Barker, though perhaps not her most immediately accessible one. I started my love for her work with The Yips from 2012, one of her three nods from the Booker Prize. Either way, do yourself a favour and read some Barker, and let her unique worldview change you - for this is what fiction should do, and she does it amongst the best.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

This was my first time reading Nicola Barker. Although her writing style (long-winded, absurd, tangential) very much resonated with my own affinities, TonyInterruptor was not the best way for me to be introduced to her work.

The (art) world setting and the cast of characters felt too unfamiliar to me, alienating. I understand that one does not always have to fully "get" a piece of art in order to appreciate it, and I have enjoyed postmodern fiction before. However, in this case, I wasn't able to connect with it. I felt outside the story, as if stuck in the shallow end.

TonyInterruptor clearly has merit, and I can see people who are more familiar with the context (narrative and literary) liking it more.
Although it eventually did not work for me, I am glad to have discovered Nicola Barker, and would definitely give her a try again. Maybe even this very same book, another time.

I am a Nicola Barker fan so I was delighted to receive an ARC of her latest book TonyInterruptor (thanks Granta Publications and Netgalley!) and it didn't disappoint.

I don't think I can describe the plot as it barely exists (and anyway I don't like reviews that tell you too much about the plot, spoils the anticipation) but the story hinges on a interruption to a live musical performance and the way in which this reverberates in the lives of those involved. (You can read the beginning of the book here: https://granta.com/tonyinterruptor/)

The characters leap off the page through their conversations. Nicola Barker is very good at writing dialogue and this is very authentic, with all the pauses and interruptions. (It would make an excellent play or film.) The conversations are quite profound in places, dealing with questions around the creation of art but they are also often screamingly funny, and I really like the way she breaks the fourth wall with occasional authorial asides about the characters and their behaviour. Mallory is a particularly intriguing character who at first seems peripheral but her lengthy internal monologue is a wonderful stream of consciousness passage and she also has a later conversation in which she is high on medication in hospital which is very funny. The ending is perfectly judged but I still want to know what happens next.

Barker plays with words very effectively and entertainingly: ... 'preposterous' (which is surely just 'ridiculous' with hidden shoe lifts')... And how does she conjure up such wonderful names for her characters? I had to look up some of names scattered about to find out if they were genuine people or her brilliant invention. And I chuckled on discovering that the musician Sasha Keyes was the son of a piano teacher named... Marian Keyes...

I was hooked from the first reference to Salinger's Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, a great favourite of mine and there are many references to other works - I often wonder how much I have missed with Barker's work, how many allusions have passed me by.

I rarely reread fiction but I am looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with these characters. Highly recommended.

'TonyInterruptor' is a playful, post-modern novel which explores ideas and satirises around truth and authenticity in today's society.

The events of the novel are sparked by an incident during an alternative jazz performance when an audience member stands up to ask "Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?" This moment, caught on film by another audience member, soon goes viral and changes the lives of everyone connected to this moment, from jazz musician Sasha Keyes and his band members to academic Lambert Shore and his teenage daughter India in the audience and Lambert's wife Mallory.

It feels like Nicola Barker is having a great deal of fun writing this novel, which means the reader does too - there are some hilarious moments as well as others which ask pertinent questions around what can be considered to be real. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of this novel to review.

If I were someone who DNFed books, I’d probably have given up on ‘TonyInterruptor’ after the first couple of pages. So many parentheses! So many asides! So many distractions!

But I’m not a DNFer, and so I persisted.

And, boy, was I rewarded.

The parentheses didn’t stop, but my thoughts about them and my reaction to them changed, and with time I began to think about the author’s intention and how maybe these interruptions (with their bursts of truth) were perhaps meant to reflect that initial interruption and burst of truth from the heckler, aka TonyInterruptor, which sets this story into motion. Of course, I could be wrong about this and overthinking it—but ‘TonyInterruptor’ is a story that will make you think, will make you examine your reaction to what is said, will make you look for meaning.

As such, this is a book best suited to readers who don’t mind their fiction on the arty side and who like authors who are Saying Something, even when that Thing Being Said is left entirely open to interpretation. While readers looking for a traditional, plot-based story will probably want to steer clear of it.

If you do decide to give it a go, it is definitely a book that benefits from being read in a single setting, which—given its shortness and its rapid pace—is entirely possible to do.

Despite my initial reservations, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and took a lot from it. It is one I will continue to think about, and will most likely return to—hopefully next time with some other readers who are willing to discuss it, as I feel there’s a lot more meaning and many more lessons for me to wring from it.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Nicola Barker and Granta Publications for the ARC. My review will be posted on Instagram, Amazon UK, Goodreads and The StoryGraph near or on the publication date.

I feel I ought to apologise to Nicola Barker for this extremely middling review, but I suppose it is also much more honest when a reviewer acknowledges that books are read in a time and a place, and often the right book comes at much the wrong time..

A time of great personal stress for me + I read this following My Friends by Hisham Matar, which I found personally and profoundly impactful - a book in which every word was wrought with meaning.

Therefore I struggled to get a hold on TonyInterruptor, which I had been rather excited to read. It was all very clever (or pretentious) and mildly amusing but absolutely the wrong kind of book for me in this moment. The abyss between my mental state/previous read and this made the novel feel vapid. For that reason I'd rather eschew stars but here I will give at the most neither here nor there of ratings - three.

Thank you to Granta and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

'Is this honest?' asks the title character at a jazz performance, in an unconventional heckle that soon 'goes viral' and leads to a lot of soul searching in the members of the jazz ensemble and the family whose teenage daughter posts the clip. It's a good question - is this book honest? It certainly doesn't depict any of the people I know or the way any of us speak, or what we think about. Do people really carry on to each other in such a wordy and highfalutin way? Perhaps they do, and I'm just not the target audience - but I reckon if that's the case, the target audience of people who can actually relate to these characters is going to be small.

Nicola Barker is what I think of as a 'literary' writer, where the prose is full of cleverness and word play, and there's as much (or more) emphasis on the way things are said as opposed to the story they are telling. These are the types of books that win prizes, but I rarely enjoy reading them very much. In this book isn't much in the way of plot, and there's a lot of very wordy dialogue. I was skim-reading from the halfway point, something I only do rarely and only when I am confident I can easily avoid missing any gems stuck in the middle of the pretentious prose.

I found the characters annoying and unsympathetic - again probably because I had nothing in common with them. They were very superficial and unrealistic - at least to me, who has no real life equivalents to test them against. I couldn't bring myself to care about their angsting about the nature of art. The blurb calls the book 'profound' but I felt it was the opposite, lots and lots of words but no substance beneath them.

I wouldn't recommend this novel personally, but if you enjoy this highly stylistic type of writing and value books with 'thinking points' over those with a coherent plot or sympathetic characters, then this is probably the novel for you after all.

Nicola Barker is a favourite author of mine and this book, just like her others, has so much humour and clever craft. It's playful in form and the overuse of brackets often reminded me of modernist classics. If the brackets felt like a nod to the past, the themes feel like a criticism of the present. Fame, culture, music and authenticity are all explored. Perhaps, in this way, Barker has created something that feels ahead of its time and, there were a few occasions where I felt a little lost, but not enough to miss the true focus of the book. I look forward to recommending this book to in the shop.

I've been reading, and loving, Nicola Barker's books since "Five Miles from Outer Hope" in 2000, and, avoiding the "best since x" cliche, it's as good as anything she's written. It's characteristically difficult to summarise, but it is about music, art, writing, identity and people (and families) getting on and not getting on. It's satirical and, as always, frequently laugh out loud funny, if somehow less British/English in focus that many of her other books - it reminded me of Nell Zink in places (which is a good thing). There are references to Tove Jansson, Martin Amis, Will Oldham and The Fall, among others. It's anarchic, over far too quickly and ends beautifully. Fantastic.