First.Edition: TonyInterruptor

by Nicola Barker

Welcome back to First.Edition, or “the Nicola Barker fanclub” as I’m thinking of rebranding. We’re talking about her most recent novel today. 2025’s TonyInterruptor was published to rave reviews by Granta last summer, and if you’re the sort of person who reads reviews, or indeed novels by Nicola Barker, you’ll know all you need to know: TonyInterruptor is a really enjoyable read, about which much has already been written by better-paid literary correspondents than I.

I’m not going to write a standard book review for TonyInterruptor. Like much of her work, I think it benefits from the reader going in as unspoiled as possible. What I am going to talk about, however, are the many ways in which this book (which is about the nature of criticism, the power of social media, friendships, desire and the left-wing artsy Middle Class intelligentsia) spookily tapped me on the shoulder. So much of this novel feels as if Nicola Baker wrote it for me personally, which is of course distinctly unlikely.

The eeriest experience I’ve ever hard whilst reading a book came in 2006, when I worked as a bookseller in Ottakar’s Canterbury. I was in the middle of reading the new Scarlett Thomas novel The End of Mr Y, and indeed I was up against something of a deadline to get my review in, and so I was physically reading the book on my way home. As I turned from Rose Lane to Canterbury High Street, the hero of the novel (who was walking too) also turned on to Canterbury High Street. I kept pace with the protagonist as we both marched down towards the Westgate tower, looking at the same landmarks and shops. But then things took a turn as we both passed the Falstaff Hotel and carried on along St. Dunstan’s and the Whistable Road, passing the House of Agnes, over the level crossing, then past the Chinese takeaway and onwards, before myself and the protagonist of The End of Mr Y both turned right, onto Beaconsfield Road. By this point I was glancing around furtively in case Scarlett Thomas should be silently creeping along behind me, chronicling our odyssey in real time. When we both took the third left onto Salisbury Road, I was basically sweating with terror and had broken into something of a high-speed mince. We took our leave of each other outside my house; me to dash inside to hide under the bed, and the hero of The End of Mr Y to carry on along Salisbury Road, through the farmland then up the hill towards the University of Kent, where (it will not surprise you to learn) my researches soon revealed that the novelist Scarlett Thomas taught creative writing.

But I digress. I was talking about Nicola Barker’s TonyInterruptor, and TonyInterruptor has nothing to do with the University of Kent. Neither do I, in fact, dear reader, because I spent three years studying at that other educational powerhouse, Canterbury Christ Church College, now Christ Church University College. A much smaller institution, in the centre of the town, whose alumni includes… well, me, my friend Jon Holmes (creator of Radio Four’s The Skewer), my ex-wife, a children’s author of note, and Pauline, who was my line manager in the international sales team of HarperCollins, who used to be the publisher for… Nicola Barker. In some small act of squaring the circle, then, parts of this novel are set at Canterbury Christ Church University College, where several of the characters lecture.

Small world.

Nicola Barker is, increasingly, sui generis. A stylist, interested in form, in freedom of expression. A jazz-player of a novelist, typified by high-wire creativity and seemingly effortless improvisation. She has a refreshingly playful sense of fun, while quietly emanating artistic honesty and artistic integrity. Purely personally, she is one of two writers I unquestioningly adore, the other being Martin Amis.

The title of the book, TonyInterruptor, is an insult coined by a jazz musician after he is heckled while improvising. For a long time, the characters in the book speculate that the expression can’t possibly have been original -isn’t it an early song by The Fall?- until finally one of the characters works out that it’s a subconscious meme. It’s a bit like “Lionel Asbo”, really, isn’t it? Lionel Asbo being, of course, the 2012 novel by… Martin Amis. It turns out I’m not the only person who read it, either, because do you know who’s a fan? Only bloody Nicola Barker.

I first read Lionel Asbo (subtitled State of England) when I lived in the Middle East, with a wonderful human being from Nairobi, who was of the Kikuyu tribe. It goes without saying that, when reaching for a Kenyan tribe to mention in TonyInterruptor, Barker reaches for the Kikuyu.

And so it goes on. By the end of the book I felt like a character from In The Approaches, which is an incredible novel about a small group of characters who exist downstream of some rather more important figures (who had all the adventure) and merely exist to sketch out the delayed aftershocks and their effect upon the periphery of existence. I felt like I exist downstream and several beats behind Nicola Barker, who of course wrote In The Approaches too.

All of which is to say very little about the novel TonyInterruptor, because I don’t really want to spoil it for you. I think you should read it, because it is very good, and at essence that’s one of the only three conclusions a book review can ever reach, no matter how much coincidence is heaped upon the reviewer to feel somehow directly involved in the novel.