For The Guardian:
This ‘romantic comedy’ set on the Sussex coast is dazzling… when Barker remembers to let the reader in on the fun
I loved this book. I hated this book. I was amazed by it. I was bored by it. I thought it beautiful, skilful, profound. I thought it clumsy, callow, silly. I admired its elliptical brilliance and its deep human discerning. I despaired of its Carry-On-Up-the-Khyber bum jokes and all the stewing self-indulgence. Fans of Nicola Barker will smile. Professional admirers will nod slowly. Detractors will grimace and shake their heads. I have never read anything like it.
In short, In the Approaches is a romantic comedy centring on two protagonists, Miss Carla Hahn and Mr Franklin D Huff, set in the coastal village of Pett Level “in the approaches of Rye Bay and Hastings” in 1984. Miss Hahn is the ex-nanny of Orla Cleary, a half-Aboriginal thalidomide child, “a tiny-armed girl visionary”, who may or may not have been a saint and/or an IRA informer depending on whether or not we believe her father, Bran, a mural artist, to have been involved in the Troubles. Ostensibly, Mr Huff, an ex-journalist of sorts, is here to investigate what went down 14 years previously when the Cleary family themselves were lying low in Level. At that time, Kim, Huff’s wife, had an affair with Bran and made “a picture diary” – hence Huff’s return to uncover the truth.
But reading Nicola Barker for plot would be perverse.