Waking Up in Toytown

A Memoir

John Burnside

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Paperback

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English

Vintage
15 January 2011

Memoirs

Series: Burnside Biographies

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, 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.

By: John Burnside
Imprint: Vintage
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 191g
ISBN: 9780099507833
ISBN 10: 0099507838
Series: Burnside Biographies
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 15 January 2011
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

John Burnside was among the most acclaimed writers of his generation. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and, in 2023, he received the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry.

Reviews for Waking Up in Toytown: A Memoir

Burnside is an utterly original author -- Harry Eyres Financial Times 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 A larger and more generous book ... the precision and beauty of his language is like a proof of his achievement - a kind of higher sanity -- Aida Eiderman Guardian 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