Bring the House Down takes place during the Edinburgh Festival, and focuses largely on the arts critic Alex Lyons, and the aftermath of a one star review he gives to a show at the festival. He’s clearly something of an amoral womaniser, and seems set to meet his downfall after sleeping with Hayley, the American star of the aforementioned one-star show before the review has been published. The novel is told from the perspective of Alex’s colleague Sophie, whose viewpoint is clouded not only by her proximity to Lyons, but also by grief, and difficulties in her own relationship and family situation, making her an interesting choice to narrate what seems to be an otherwise fairly black and white story.

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.