Waking Up in Toytown: A Memoir Book

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.