Waking Up in Toytown
A Memoir
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:6th Jan '11
Should be back in stock very soon
The sequel to the award-winning A Lie About My Father.
In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, the author resolved to escape his addictive personality and find calm in a 'Surbiton of the mind'. This title tells is an account of a troubled childhood.
In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, John Burnside resolved to escape his addictive personality and find calm in a 'Surbiton of the mind'. But the suburbs are not quite as normal as he had imagined and, as he relapses into chaos, he encounters a homicidal office worker who is obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock and Petula Clark, an old lover, with whom he reprises a troubled, masochistic relationship and, finally, the seemingly flesh-and-blood embodiments of all his private phantoms.
The sequel to his haunting, celebrated account of a troubled childhood, Waking Up in Toytown is unsettling, touching, oddly romantic and unflinchingly honest.
There is no truer writer than John Burnside...[A] searching enquiry into a life: bruised, filled with grace and as plangent and haunting as any plainsong -- Catherine Lockerbie * Scotsman *
Burnside's memoir deserves to become a classic. Has anyone written about the direct experience of mental illness with such scrupulous observation and wit? * Daily Express *
A brilliant portrait of isolation... This sophisticated study of the human mind argues for our right "to continue in the pursuit of whole-heartedness. To be not-normal after all" -- Fiona Sampson * Independent *
Beautifully written and observed memoir ... an affecting book from a writer of manifest talent; a compellingly readable memoir possessed of a genuine spiritual and intellectual depth -- Adam O'Riordan * Sunday Telegraph *
This is an extraordinary book and one so honest it scorches -- Carlo Gebler * Irish Times *
Burnside is an utterly original author -- Harry Eyres * Financial Times *
The precision and beauty of his language is like a proof of his achievement... a kind of higher sanity -- Aida Eiderman * Guardian *
[One of the] most lucid and poetic of memoirs -- Jane Shilling * Daily Telegraph *
Burnside may not find himself convincing, but this complex, considered piece of work certainly is -- Doug Johnstone * Independent *
Hauntingly written ... a gripping, often humours account of the world of the functioning alcoholic ... stunningly exact prose -- Bee Wilson * Sunday Times *
ISBN: 9780099507833
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 17mm
Weight: 191g
272 pages