Waking Up in Toytown: A Memoir

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.

• | Author: John Burnside
• | Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• | Publication Date: Jan 06, 2011
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9780099507833
• | ISBN-10: 0099507838