Waking Up in Toytown, John Burnside romance Basket Case is an entertaining

Basket Case is an entertaining delight from first page to last and spells out a hilariously hard-won triumph for muckraking journalism

and often unexpected ideas

The Island of Missing Trees is a rich

and shows how it is linked to pesticides

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

Waking Up in Toytown, John Burnside romance Basket Case is an entertainingIn 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,