WAKING UP IN TOYTOWN
Book ID/图书代码： 11701209B33558
English Summary/英文概要： 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.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 八十年代初期，一个男子逃到了市郊，他有着轻微的精神疾病，在泛滥的药物中挣扎度过了10年，现在他想要开始一段正常人的生活。他以这个为目标，在仅剩的好友的帮助下找到了一份稳定的工作。为了摆脱自己的成瘾习性，并寻找“心灵的瑟比顿”，他开始参加“嗜酒者互戒协会”，决心“消失在平庸中”。然而他仍然逃不出自己头脑中的恶魔，不久之后便回到了原来的地方。
郊区的生活并不像他想象的那样平凡普通，他反复地陷入混乱状态。
他遇到一个嗜杀的上班族，那家伙狂热地崇拜希区柯克和佩杜拉克拉克；
他又遇见一位旧时情人，与她纠缠于性虐待的关系中；
最后随着他在幻境中的越坠越深， 他遇见了他所有精神个体的化身……(NH)
Awards/获奖情况：苏格兰萨尔泰图书奖得主
苏格兰艺术委员会年度图书奖得主
`Burnside is an utterly original author’---Financial Times
他是一个真正的原创作家---金融时报
’beautifully written and observed memoir... a writer of manifest talent... readable memoir possessed of a genuine spiritual and intellectual depth’---Sunday Telegraph
华丽的文字、细致入微的回忆……他是一个天才般的作家，这部引人入胜的回忆录同时拥有着精神和理性的深度。---星期日电讯报
’Burnside’s memoir deserves to become a classic.’---Daily Express
Burnside的回忆录值得成为经典---每日快报
`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’---Guardian
`most lucid and poetic of memoirs’---Daily Telegraph
`Burnside may not find himself convincing, but this complex, considered piece of work certainly is’---Independent
`There is no truer writer than John Burnside... filled with grace and as plangent and haunting as any plainsong.’---Scotsman
`hauntingly written ... a gripping, often humours account of the world of the functioning alcoholic ... stunningly exact prose’---Sunday Times
’disturbing, powerful memoir’---Sunday Times
’One of the best memoirs I’ve read for ages’---Spectator
’a brilliant portrayal of isolation...this sophisticated study of the human mind argues for our right "to cintinue in the pursuit of whole-heartedness. To be not normal after all."’---Independent
’"beautifully written" new memoir...He writes about "squalor and desperation" with "precision and beauty"’---The Week
`[Burnside has a] poetic eye for language and image...[a] non-judgemental, ultimately redemptive search for some sort of meaning among the shifting sands of madness and sanity’.---The Metro
`This is an extraordinary book and one so honest it scorches’---The Irish Times
About the Author/作者介绍： John Burnside has published five works of fiction and ten previous collections of poetry, including The Asylum Dance, which won the 2000 Whitbread Poetry Award. His Selected Poems was published in 2006, alongside his memoir, A Lie About My Father, which was the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year.
John Burnside出版了五部小说作品以及先前的十部诗集，其中包括获得2000年白面包诗歌奖的《庇护之舞》。他的精选诗集于2006年出版，同年出版自传《父亲的谎言》，书里描绘了一个失落的、畸形的童年时代，以及破败的父子关系。《父亲的谎言》获得苏格兰萨尔泰图书奖和苏格兰艺术委员会非小说类年度图书奖。
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Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
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