Waking Up in Toytown

A Memoir

By: John Burnside

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Paperback | 25 November 2025

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19.6 x 12.9 x 1.7

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With wit, precision and grace, John Burnside's second memoir traces the aftershocks of a troubled childhood into troubled adulthood - with a new introduction by Sarah Perry

With wit, precision and grace, John Burnside's second memoir traces the aftershocks of a troubled childhood into troubled adulthood.

With a new introduction by Sarah Perry

'Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched' Andrew O'Hagan

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 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, as he drifts further into unreality.

The second of John Burnside's extraordinary trilogy of memoirs, Waking Up in Toytown is the story of one man's search for sanity - but also the story of love that outgrows its restraints and a scorching enquiry into the soul, from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

'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

About the Author

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. He died in 2024.

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