{"title":"Books by John Burnside","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781784870119","title":"The Dumb House","description":"\u003cp\u003eAs a child, Luke’s mother often tells him the story of the Dumb House, an experiment on newborn babies raised in silence, designed to test the innateness of language.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs Luke grows up, his interest in language and the delicate balance of life and death leads to amateur dissections of small animals – tiny hearts revealed still pumping, as life trickles away. But as an adult, following the death of his mother, Luke’s obsession deepens, resulting in a haunting and bizarre experiment on Luke’s own children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘A wonderfully disturbing book - chillingly focused and lyrically amoral with moments of remarkable stillness and beauty.’ A.L. Kennedy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Burnside's prose is exquisite, and he dissects his themes with delicacy to produce a novel resonant with poetic menace’ \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43204969660594,"sku":"9781784870119","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784870119.jpg?v=1786025338"},{"product_id":"9781781255629","title":"The Music of Time","description":"A Financial Times Book of the YearThough we might not realise it, our collective memory of the twentieth century was defined by the poets who lived and wrote in it. At every significant turning point we find them, pen in hand, fingers poised at the typewriter, ready to distil the essence of the moment, from the muddy wastes of the Western front to the vast reckoning that came with the end of empire. This is the first and only history of twentieth century poetry, by the acclaimed poet, author and academic John Burnside. Bringing together poets from times and places as diverse as Tsarist Russia, 1960's America and Ireland at the height of the Troubles, The Music of Time reveals how poets engaged with and shaped the most important issues of their times - and were in their turn affected by their context and dialogue with each other. This is a major work of scholarship, that on every page bears witness to the transformative beauty and power of poetry.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205027463346,"sku":"9781781255629","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781781255629.jpg?v=1786025397"},{"product_id":"9781787332348","title":"Learning to Sleep","description":"\u003cb\u003eLucid, lyrical, and intellectually profound: this collection of poems resonates with life and death, but mostly what falls in between: the charmed darkness.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeveral ghosts haunt \u003ci\u003eLearning to Sleep\u003c\/i\u003e, from the author's mother, commemorated in an exquisitely charged variant on the pastoral elegy, to the poet Arthur Rimbaud, who wanders an implausible Lincolnshire landscape looking for some sign of belonging. Throughout the book, the powers and dominions of a lost pagan ancestry emerge unexpectedly through the gaps in contemporary life: half-seen and fleeting, but profoundly present. Behind it all, the figure of Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, marks Burnside's own attempts to come to terms with the severe sleep disorder from which he has suffered for years, a condition that culminated in the recent near-death experience that informs the latter part of the book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAdd to this a series of provocative meditations on the ways in which we are all harmed by institutions, from organised religion, or marriage, to the tawdry concepts of gender and romantic love that subtly govern our personal lives, and \u003ci\u003eLearning to Sleep\u003c\/i\u003e reveals Burnside at his most elegiac, while still retaining a radical pagan's sense of celebration and cultural independence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘I read it over and over again, marvelling at its concision and beauty.' Cressida Connolly, \u003ci\u003eSpectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e** A \u003ci\u003eSPECTATOR \u003c\/i\u003eBOOK OF THE YEAR 2021**\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205102796978,"sku":"9781787332348","price":14.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781787332348.jpg?v=1786025749"},{"product_id":"9781529909258","title":"Ruin, Blossom","description":"\u003cb\u003eA remarkable collection exploring ageing, mortality and environmental destruction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e**WINNER OF THE DAVID COHEN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023**\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'By far the best British poet alive' \u003c\/b\u003eSPECTATOR\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A master of language' \u003c\/b\u003eHILARY MANTEL\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this powerful, moving book, John Burnside takes his cue from Schiller, who recognised that, as one thing fades, so another flourishes: everywhere and always, in matters great and small, \u003ci\u003enew life blossoms amongst the ruins\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere, in poems that explore ageing, mortality, environmental destruction and mental illness, Burnside not only mourns what is lost in passing, but also celebrates the new, and sometimes unexpected, forms that emerge from such losses. An elegy for a dead lover ends with a quiet recognition of everyday beauty – \u003ci\u003efirst sun streaming through the trees … a skylark in the near field, flush with song\u003c\/i\u003e – as the speaker emerges from lockdown after a long illness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThroughout, the poet attends to the quality of grace – numinous, exquisite, fleeting as an angel’s wing – and the broken tryst between humankind and its spiritual and animal elements, even with itself: \u003ci\u003ethe gaunt deer on the roads\/like refugees\u003c\/i\u003e. He acknowledges the inevitability of the fading towards death, but still finds chimes of light in the darkness – insisting that, here and now, even in decline, the world, when given its due attention, is \u003ci\u003eall Annunciation.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e*A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE \u003ci\u003eTIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT\u003c\/i\u003e*\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43605785870514,"sku":"9781529909258","price":13.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529909258_ed3928f5-8d07-4463-b60e-6f97db8d4c1a.jpg?v=1786023235"},{"product_id":"9781529962871","title":"Waking Up in Toytown","description":"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’HaganIn 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","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55897450316149,"sku":"9781529962871","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529962871_de9722ec-13ac-432f-84ff-187bac1c6ef4.jpg?v=1786023155"},{"product_id":"9781529962864","title":"I Put a Spell on You","description":"The last of John Burnside’s three memoirs, I Put a Spell on You is an enthralling ode to love and wonder in all its forms With a new introduction by Seán Hewitt'A master of language' Hilary MantelThe first time he was played ‘I Put a Spell on You’, John Burnside thought he had never heard a more beautiful song – it was an enchantment, a fascination that would turn to obsession. Implicit in the song were all the ambiguities that intrigued him – love, possession, and danger.   In this exquisite and haunting book, John Burnside evokes his coming of age from the industrial misery of Cowdenbeath and Corby to the new world of Cambridge, and follows his drifting thoughts and memories along the way: from uncanny encounters with ‘lost girls’ to digressions on voodoo, acid, and insomnia, alongside a cast that includes Kafka, Narcissus, Diane Arbus and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.   The last of John Burnside’s three memoirs, I Put a Spell on You is a memoir of romance – of lost love and the love of being lost – darkened by threat, illuminated by glamour.   'Astonishing… Not just brilliant, but essential reading' Independent'Exact and enthralling' Tessa Hadley","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55897470402933,"sku":"9781529962864","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529962864_c4d92455-3bce-4e4e-9bbf-d2bdc6e6d286.jpg?v=1786023154"},{"product_id":"9781529962888","title":"A Lie About My Father","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Burnside recalls the failed relationship with his father, in the first of his trilogy of exquisite memoirs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith a new introduction by Megan Nolan\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘A master of language’ Hilary Mantel\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe had his final heart attack in the Silver Band Club in Corby, somewhere between the bar and the cigarette machine. A foundling; a fantasist; a morose, threatening drinker who was quick with his hands, he hadn’t seen his son for years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJohn Burnside’s extraordinary story of this failed relationship is a beautifully written evocation of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father’s world: men defined by the drink they could take and the pain they could stand, men shaped by their guilt and machismo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Lie About My Father\u003c\/i\u003e is about forgiving but not forgetting, about examining the way men are made and how they fall apart, and about understanding that in order to have a good son you must have a good father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Memoir this good illuminates something larger than itself. It is an exercise in understanding, compassion and forgiveness’ \u003ci\u003eSunday Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSaltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55897766265205,"sku":"9781529962888","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529962888_81eda18a-eda0-407e-b67a-56cb9d31bd43.jpg?v=1786034387"},{"product_id":"9780099479536","title":"A Lie About My Father","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA moving, unforgettable memoir of two lost men: a father and his child.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe had his final heart attack in the Silver Band Club in Corby, somewhere between the bar and the cigarette machine. A foundling; a fantasist; a morose, threatening drinker who was quick with his hands, he hadn't seen his son for years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJohn Burnside's extraordinary story of this failed relationship is a beautifully written evocation of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father's world: men defined by the drink they could take and the pain they could stand, men shaped by their guilt and machismo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Lie About My Father\u003c\/i\u003e is about forgiving but not forgetting, about examining the way men are made and how they fall apart, about understanding that in order to have a good son you must have a good father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Memoir this good illuminates something larger than itself. It is an exercise in understanding, compassion and forgiveness' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eSunday Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSaltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56223205884277,"sku":"9780099479536","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099479536_9de208e4-585a-4eb1-ad7d-988e50c66d5f.jpg?v=1786011311"},{"product_id":"9780099507833","title":"Waking Up in Toytown","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 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'. 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As he says in one story, ‘All a man has is his work and his sense of himself, all the secret life he holds inside that nobody else can know.’ But in each of these normal, damaged lives, we are shown something extraordinary: a dogged belief in some kind of hope or beauty that flies in the face of all reason and is, as a result, both transfiguring and heart-rending.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eThere is no telling what kind of gifts one of John Burnside’s wonderful sentences will contain.’ Anne Enright\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56223552012661,"sku":"9780099575597","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099575597_72f35024-2255-43b9-a850-3783a16ca923.jpg?v=1786011206"},{"product_id":"9780099554936","title":"Ashland \u0026 Vine","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘A master of language.’  Hilary Mantel\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eKate, a grieving, semi-alcoholic film student, invites an elderly woman to take part in an oral-history documentary.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJean declines but makes her a bizarre counteroffer: if Kate can stay sober for four days, she will tell her a story. If she can stay sober beyond that, there will be another, and then another, amounting to the entire history of one family’s life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGradually, Jean offers a heart-breaking account, not only of her own history – a lost lover, a family scarred by war – but of the American century itself; as a deep connection emerges between the women which will transform both of their lives in this remarkable novel about love grief, and the power of unlikely friendships.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘Burnside wrestles with hugeness in a way that few writers dare to … convincingly gracious and profoundly necessary.’ Ali Smith\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224144392565,"sku":"9780099554936","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099554936_410f01b7-844e-4c7e-a45b-41a5c9a0a0c6.jpg?v=1786011737"},{"product_id":"9780224093859","title":"Black Cat Bone","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Burnside's remarkable book is full of strange, unnerving poems that hang in the memory like a myth or a song.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese are poems of thwarted love and disappointment, of raw desire, of the stalking beast, 'eye-teeth\/and muzzle\/coated with blood'; poems that recognise 'we have too much to gain from the gods, and this is why\/they fail to love us'; poems that tell of an obsessive lover coming to grief in a sequence that echoes the old murder ballads, or of a hunter losing himself in the woods while pursuing an unknown and possibly unknowable quarry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on sources as various as the paintings of Pieter Brueghel and the lyrics of Delta blues, \u003ci\u003eBlack Cat Bone\u003c\/i\u003e examines varieties of love, faith, hope and illusion, to suggest an unusual possibility: that when the search for what we expected to find - in the forest or in our own hearts - ends in failure, we can now begin the hard and disciplined quest for what is actually there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘The unmistakeable work of a master’ \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56227486728565,"sku":"9780224093859","price":13.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780224093859_ed61cc58-40bc-4f60-8769-a10ab31dd834.jpg?v=1786012168"},{"product_id":"9780224078030","title":"Selected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eOver seventeen years and nine collections, John Burnside built - in the words of Bernard O'Donoghue - 'a poetic corpus of the first significance', a poetry of luminous, limpid grace.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, his territory is the no-man's-land of threshold and margin, the charmed half-light of the liminal, a domestic world threaded through with mystery, myth and longing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe can see themes emerge and develop within the growing confidence of Burnside's sinuous lyric poise: the place of the individual in the world, the idea of dwelling, of \u003ci\u003ehome\u003c\/i\u003e, within that community, and the lure of absence and escape set against the possibilities of renewal and continuity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is consummate, immaculate work born out of a lean and agile craftsmanship, profound philosophical thought and a haunted, haunting imagination; the result is a poetry that makes intimate, resonant, exquisite music.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56227729768821,"sku":"9780224078030","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780224078030_2b23e73a-fe1c-4158-a2cf-4f501f917242.jpg?v=1786012952"},{"product_id":"9781787334557","title":"The Empire of Forgetting","description":"\u003cb\u003eA powerful exploration of life and death, illness and grace, wonder and beauty, in the posthumous collection from one of our greatest contemporary poets\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'It’s impossible not to love the world more when reading Burnside' \u003ci\u003eGUARDIAN\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A master of language' HILARY MANTEL\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJohn Burnside’s last collection of new poems gathers around a single theme – mortality – and draws on his faltering health and earlier glances with death, creating a powerfully moving exploration of memory, forgetting and the seven ages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere, as always, there is a clear-eyed curiosity; a sense of wonder at the beleaguered natural world and its endless mutability – its hidden beauty, often suddenly disclosed – and a deep faith in its old gods. 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