Waking Up in Toytown. John Burnside - Softcover

Burnside, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099507838 ISBN 13: 9780099507833

Publisher: Vintage Books USA, 2011

Synopsis

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 embodiemnts 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.

About this title

About the Author:

John Burnside has published five works of fiction and ten previous collections of poetry, including The Asylum Dance, which won the 2000 Whitbread Poetry Award. His Selected Poems was published in 2006, alongside his memoir, A Lie About My Father, which was the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0099507838
• ISBN 13: 9780099507833
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 262