Waking Up in Toytown - Couverture rigide

Burnside, John

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0224080733 ISBN 13 : 9780224080736

Editeur : Jonathan Cape, 2010

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, a man runs away to the suburbs, to live what he hopes will be a normal life. With the aid of his last remaining friends he finds a regular job, goes to AA meetings and resolves to 'disappear into the banal' - to escape his addictive personality and find a 'Surbiton of the mind'- but he can't seem to outrun his own demons and, before long, he is back where he started.

The suburbs, though, 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 - as he drifts further and further into unreality.

The sequel to his haunting, celebrated account of a troubled childhood, A Lie About My Father, John Burnside's startling new memoir follows his hopeless quest for peace and mental security as the ghosts and terrors close in and the illusion of Surbiton falls apart. Unsettling, touching, oddly romantic and unflinchingly honest, this is the story of one man's search for sanity - but it is also, in its own way, the true story of an impossible, unmanageable love.

Revue de presse :

"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)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Jonathan Cape
• Date d'édition: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0224080733
• ISBN 13: 9780224080736
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 272