This starts with a small interruption at a live event that is recorded and goes viral. But rather than this being the jumping off point for a plot to unravel it instead asks who owns this moment, how describing events changes them and ultimately is there a truth to things that it’s possible to know. It made me think about what culture and art means right now, but then called me out for being overly cerebral and not experiencing life. I felt like this wasn’t just a book where the characters discussed things but where I was in conversation with the book itself. Lots to think about from this.

This was very funny. Not the type of book I would normally read but it was short so I took a punt and really enjoyed it.

4.5 ⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Granta Publications for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This was a superbly witty philosophical discourse for modern times. Among other themes, it examines the butterfly effect from a couple of moments caught on camera that go viral after a musical performance is interrupted by an unusual heckler.

This was far more profound than I expected it to be, seamlessly blending considerations of art, music, family dynamics, psychological awakenings and, above all else, honesty. This actually gave me the experience that I had wanted from Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, which made me feel like I was back at University and so felt like a chore. This was REAL. Vibrantly, bizarrely real. It stopped me in my tracks, page after page.

This will not be for everyone, especially those who need a cohesive plot in their modern lit fic (which I don't, though I do in other genres) or loveable characters. The structure is really a series of vignettes rather than a straightforward narrative. An exploration of themes through a beautifully flawed, human lens.

My gripe? I wanted even more exploration and messiness, because the writing was so moreish. It was meandering, overloaded with asides, sharply witty and deeply thought-provoking at the same time. Books that can make me laugh and also cut straight though into my psyche really are very special. This was an absolute triumph.

'Shore is an architect', John Lincoln Braithwaite finally volunteers (perhaps relenting slightly), 'and Kinebuchi is a musician, so it makes perfect sense that their individual creative disciplines should find concorde... find harmony ... around the idea of 'intuitive constructions. All good art is about building things intuitively, be that a life, a museum, a city, a story, a song ..?'

TonyInterruptor is Nicola Barker's first novel since the 2019 I Am Sovereign, or arguably since the 2017 Goldsmiths Prize winning H(a)ppy, as she said that work 'destroyed the novel (as a form) for The Author' and led to the sneeze of a novella that I Am Sovereign.

The novel opens with a man interrupting a jazz concert in a Kentish cathedral town (presumably a fictionalised Canterbury) by Sasha Keyes and His Ensemble:

"He pointed at Sasha Keyes who had just begun what he (Sasha Keyes) felt to be a particularly devastating improvised trumpet solo, and added, almost pityingly, ‘You, especially.’

The interruptor had a good voice, a strong voice. It was fundamentally classless but with the slightest suggestion of northern grit. It had a pleasing timbre: low, grave, sincere. And the line was delivered in such a way that it seemed at once spontaneous but considered, indignant but measured. It was heartfelt. There was . . . somehow or other, there was soul."

The interruption and words spoken, although missed by much of the audience are filmed and uploaded to Snapchat by a teenage girl in the audience, India Shore.

And when Sasha and his Ensemble (the Ensemble didn’t consider themselves to be ‘his’ or ‘an ensemble’, so much as a group of individuals who just happened to be playing together, several of whom actively despised each other) discuss back stage what was said, he gives the man a label, and also tells his female bandmate and ex-wife Fi Kinebuchi to 'Shut the fuck up' when she tries to adds her own musings.

"‘What the fuck? Some random, fucking nobody,’ Sasha snarls, ‘some dickweed, small-town TonyInterruptor . . .’ He temporarily runs out of invective because his levels of upsetness are too profound to be fully encapsulated by mere words (or ‘worms’ as Larry Frome likes to refer to them – semi-seriously)."

The ensemble's pianist Simo videod the exchange and uploads it, and the #TonyInterruptor both to his own Snapchat but also as a comment on India's post, and the whole goes viral.

'TonyInterruptor' himself, when tracked down by India's stepmother Lambert Shore (who finds herself oddly infatuated with him believing he resembles the actor Anders Danielsen Lie) proves to be an art curator, John Lincoln Braithwaite, whose mother used all 5 syllables of his name from when he was a child and generally an unassuming individual:

"He reads real books. John Lincoln Braithwaite reads real books methodically and respectfully, from beginning to end (although there will sometimes be the slamming down of books accompanied by muttered expostulations or sharp exhalations - the odd well-chosen swear word - the occasional cluck or tut). He nevertheless reads books from cover to cover. He does not flip to the final page in a sudden moment of impatience. He is disciplined. He is respectful of books in the way that he is respectful of people and in the way that he is not respectful of live music performances.

Why is this?"

While the novel describes the incident as The First Interruption ... "It became a little piece of Performance Lore; a source of ferocious interest/contention/amusement/debate across at least three creative disciplines, the subject of four books – this being the third – and the root of approximately 2.5 million tweets and memes", the novel doesn't explore the impact on the wider cultural scene, but rather the repurcussions on the lives and self-perceptions of those involved, connected, perhaps reflecting the provincial nature of the town, surprisingly closely.

The story particularly centres around the Shore family - India; Lambert, India's father and a professor of Architecture at the local Christ Church University, where Fi Kinebuchi also lectures on music; Mallory his second wife, and India's stepmum, formally a mature student in law at the University; and Lambert and Mallory's 8 yo daughter Gunn, who has special needs.

The second part, and last 20%, of the novel, Intuitive Constructions takes us around 3 years after the incident, when the dynamic amongst the different characters has changed significantly, including the making of some additionally rather accidental art.

The novel comes with an epigraph from Mark E. Smith, lead vocalist of the band The Fall, and most people's reaction to the #tag is that it sounds like a Fall song, Mallory taking it one step further in a passage which hits on the one of the novel's themes of intellectual property in a social media age - Sasha is rather proud of his #tag, if annoyed by the incident, and unhappy that it seems to be credited to Simo and, to an extent, India - vs. collective ownership:

"Lionel Asbo, Mallory hits him.
'Sorry?' Sasha frowns.
'Lionel Asbo, Mallory repeats, 'Remember? The novel? By Martin Amis? Got a mixed reception in ... um ... can't remember..?'
'What?' Sasha frowns.
'You didn't come up with the phrase, Sasha!' Mallory is triumphant, 'TonyInterruptor. It isn't yours. And it isn't Mark E Smith's, either. It's Martin's. Can't you hear it? Lionel Asbo?
TonyInterruptor? The rhythm? The symmetry? The implicit snideness? You simply improvised on Martin's original. You adapted his phrase. You unconsciously adapted Martin's phrase?
'Um... Sasha is processing. He continues to frown.
'And who knows, maybe Martin was originally channelling a Fall song? Maybe Mark E Smith was hidden away in there somewhere? It seems improbable... but who cares? The important thing is that it isn't yours, Mallory repeats, 'It was already floating around in the ether like so much cultural flotsam. It belongs to the collective unconscious. It's ours.

Enjoyable, highly readable and perhaps more profound, on reflection, than the quick read the text encourages would suggest. 3.5 stars rounded to 4 for now.

TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker is a well-observed and thought-provoking novel with characters and situations that keep you wanting to read more.

TonyInterruptor follows the fallout from a heckler (no, sorry an interruptor) at a provincial town jazz gig, a minor act and unwelcome improvisation that sends the affected parties (the performers, the family of the teenager who films it, TonyInterruptor himself) spiralling after videos of the event go viral.

I found this novel so fun and playful, swooping in and out of each of the character's disjointed thoughts and feelings (my favourite being an idle fantasy about Norwegian actor/doctor Anders Danielsen Lie being interupted by practical worries about his country's healthcare system for visiting tourists).

The novel asks the big questions, what is honesty? Does our art matter? What happens when our egos are hurt?

From the first page the characters are so sharply drawn, I feel as if many people reading will know the exact type of Art People that are being skewered here. As ridiculous and self-absorbed as they can come across, they always feel real, and you can't help but feel sympathy for them as they scramble to deal with the greatest horror of the modern age, going viral.

I found the second part of the novel, set three years after the heckle, oddly uplifting, when the aftershocks of the heckle have settled and the characters have recalibrated and changed, both personally and artistically.

A great read, thanks Granta for the ARC.

The Queen is back! I've enjoyed every single Barker novel I've read, and I've read almost every single one. I'm tempted to call what attracts me to her novels a kind of vitalism (inorganic, as Deleuze would have it) that crackles and sizzles from every page. I don't necessarily mean the liveliness of the characters and the stories and the narrative drive, though those are quite vibrant, too. What I am going for is on a more formal level, even the organization of the page - lines, paragraphs, capitals, even color (as in H(A)PPY). Everything works to construct an effect of liveliness and animation that gives Barker's novels that special feeling we love in her books. To put on a more theoretical hat, this vitalism of Barker's is also what I'm more critical of, as I slowly but surely move away from the (post-)Deleuzian vitalist insistence on joy and toward the deintensification and cessation of affect (cf. The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. Damn you, Patricia!

IS THIS HONEST?

I am, honestly, absolutely infatuated by this book. I stayed up way too late reading it and it gave me all kinds of odd dreams (including foretelling the Pope's death). Nicola Barker has crafted a masterpiece. If you enjoy eavesdropping on conversations and making comments about said conversations in your mind, then you are sure to adore this book.

I laughed. I cried. I pondered.

An easy 5/5 Stars. Many thanks to NetGalley and Granta Publications for the ARC.

Nicola Barker gives us a hilarious story about the pointless strife for authenticity, a Künstlerroman turned comedy of manners in the digital age - and all that in her super-recognizable voice. Everything starts with a free jazz concert starring trumpet player Sasha Keyes, whose show is, you guessed it, interrupted by art curator John Lincoln Braithwaite, who stands up an inquires: "Is this honest? Are we being honest here?" - which is filmed by teenager India Shore. Backstage, Sasha is furious about the incident, calling John (whom he doesn't know personally) "some dick-weed, small-town TonyInterruptor" and telling music professor Fi Kinebuchi who plays autoharp, lyre and guitar in the band to "shut the fuck up" - which is filmed by the band's pianist Simo Treen. Needless to say, both clips go viral.

What ensues is a butterfly effect that shakes up the lives of many of the rather big cast of characters, from India, her father and her stepmom (a professor for architecture and a lawyer), to Sasha, Fi, of course John, and some minor figures. The digital virality and how it functions is in fact the least interesting part and mainly employed for laughs and as a catalyst, it's more about questioning the line between life and art in the sense that we are all constantly playing, signaling, performing. And maybe that isn't so bad: Life is a work of art. A central conundrum the characters ponder is the tension between intuition/improvisation and control/concept: Is it all about the sprezzatura? The characters hold different standpoints regarding these issues, and they are in constant debate about them.

According to those themes, Barker refers to all kinds of art, from Yayoi Kusama (India has a sibling with special needs) over J.D. Salinger to Anders Danielsen Lie. In the text, the expression TonyInterruptor is attributed to Lionel Asbo: State of England by Martin Amis (which Barker reviewed here) and / or Mark E. Smith. It is great fun to read how the art serves as expression of positions, how viewpoints clash, and, most importantly, how relationships shift, all triggered by John's heckling.

The second, shorter part of the novel is set three years after the incident, and the many relationship constellations are now different - and it feels like this constant change, that is also represented in new attitudes towards making art, will continue. Barker has managed to package the debates, that do have heavily theoretical backgrounds, in a light, propulisve, funny, engaging, and highly intelligent story, and it's such a pleasure to read.

You can already read an excerpt of the novel here.

TonyInterruptor explores the fallout from a question shouted from the audience at a jazz improvisation gig which goes viral. The interruption is inadvertently filmed by sixteen-year-old India who posts it on her Instagram, thrilled by the number of likes and followers it attracts. Alerted to this in the backroom postmortem after the gig, Sasha Keyes lets forth a diatribe, dubbing the questioner TonyInterruptor, covertly filmed by a band member who hashtags his post with it. The usual hysteria, hateful comments and brief fame ensues from the posts sending fault lines through the lives of those involved. Three years later, several lives have undergone surprising transformations not least John Lincoln Braithwaite’s aka TonyInterruptor.
In her own inimitable way, Barker keeps us amused by smartly skewering artistic and intellectual pretensions while turning her book into a novel of ideas which gives her readers much to contemplate about honesty, the influence of social media, authenticity and relationships, at the same time making them laugh and wince in recognition.