TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker

A new novel by Nicola Barker is something I always look forward to. Each one is totally different, yet quintessentially Barker, no-one captures the absurdities of life as she does. TonyInterruptor does this brilliantly. The novel all stems from an event at a jazz gig, where a man stands up and interrupts it with the comment,

‘Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?’
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.’

Before I read the novel, knowing there would be an interruption at a concert, I’d been imagining something akin to when Bob Dylan went electric – and a member of the crowd shouted ‘Judas!’ at him in Manchester for betraying his acoustic folk roots. Acres of text have been written about this incident and Dylan’s electrification, (which led to some of his best music don’t you think?). It even featured in the Dylan biopic last year.

However, discovering this particular interruption in the novel was during a jazz solo, led me down a whole other route. Talking to a friend of mine Simon Currie who happens to play sax with the Manfreds (Paul Jones is still going at 83!), confirmed to me that jazz improvisations are never true improvisations. Musicians build up libraries of short riffs, which with experience, they can combine and use to build improvisations on, so much of a jazz solo may be building blocks so to speak. Is that an honest? Is it authentic? Does the musician do exactly the same set of riffs each time they play, or do they vary it a bit? I can remember being subjected to a twenty minute solo by the late Jaco Pastorius on fretless bass at a Weather Report gig in the late 1970s – but I bet he did make it entirely different every night!

But the actual interruption is only a tiny part of this novel. It’s the after-effects that Barker explores, for of course, the interruption was videoed and posted online, taking on a whole life of its own once the musician who was interrupted christens the interruptor and one of the other guys adds a hashtag to the tweet. The musicians and hangers-on are debating what they heard post-gig,

‘What did you hear, Tims?’ Sasha Keyes demands.
‘I heard “Is this honest? Are we being honest here? You especially.”‘
Tims points at Sasha Keyes. He holds out his pointing arm with a measure of Gothic aplomb, like the Grim Reaper.
‘What the fuck? Some random fucking nobody,’ Sasha snarls, ‘some dick-weed, 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).
‘TonyInterruptor,’ Larry Frome echoes, ‘one worm? Heh!’
‘Surely the title of an early Fall single?’ Simo Treen chuckles, also impressed, in spite of himself.

Sasha’s ensemble comprises Larry on synths, Tims on cello, Simo on piano, and Fi Kinebuchi on auto-harp and guitar. Fi was married to Sasha for 6 years and is currently an item with Larry. She is also a lecturer in music at Christ Church uni, where architecture professor Lambert Shore also works and he becomes obsessed by her hair! It was Lambert’s sixteen-year-old daughter India, whom he had dragged to the gig that filmed the interruption. Meanwhile, Lambert’s wife Mallory, a barrister and India’s step-mother is listening to him telling her about the conversation he had with the interruptor aka John Lincoln Braithwaite in the cloakroom queue.

‘So then I said. “Is authenticity intrinsically more important or interesting than musicianship in performance? Do the two things always necessarily need to co-exist?” ‘
‘Haha. Oh you were pissed,’ Mallory chuckles, drolly. ‘How did he respond?’
‘He said, “Yes,” then immediately added, “Radiohead slash Muse . . . although I don’t have much time for either, as it happens . . . the Beatles slash the Monkees. Truth is beauty.” Then he laughed. Then he ruminated for a moment and said, “I feel like I aged approximately five years during the course of this conversation.
Then he walked off.

It is Mallory who becomes obsessed with JLB aka TonyInterruptor. She ends up in A&E having fallen and broken her ankle where she meets Sasha who was there having had a panic attack and they have a hilarious but deep conversation, the lives of Barker’s key characters continuing to intersect and influence each other. My favourite by far though was young India, who sees through everyone, but in her teenager’s black and white way of looking at the world – never acknowledging the shades of grey that make it work for most of us.

I loved Barker’s narration of the story, full of pithy asides in brackets and often pausing to contemplate one of the issues she so neatly skewers – be it authenticity, the artistic temperament, pretention in all its forms, and of course the influence of social media, and including the ‘truth’ on the sources of musical improv I alluded to above. It was T.S. Eliot whom the saying “Good writers borrow; great writers steal” is attributed to, and Barker hilariously demonstrates that time and time again with her satire, which made me laugh out loud many times as I got her jokes. She loves to provoke, and beneath the humour there is a real debate going on in this book, she offers resolution to the characters’ stories, but deliberately leaves us to form our own conclusions about that honesty question.

And just in case you hadn’t realised this was a satire – there’s the cover – don’t you think the man who is talking out of his arse is saying, ‘Pretentious? Moi?’ to quote Sybil in Fawlty Towers? Classic!

I devoured this novel. It’s probably best read in one or two sittings to keep everything straight in your head given that it’s mostly conversation (with asides). There have been many novels about social media fallout – and even about the authenticity argument (c.f. White Tears by Hari Kunzru), but none so brilliantly verbose in the best way and as funny as Barker’s. It would be a good place to start with her work.

See also: Susan’s review here.

Source: Own copy Granta hardback, 208 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link (free UK+ P&P)