Toy Fights

Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963 and spent his boyhood living on a working-class council housing estate. Toy Fights is the remarkable story of his first twenty years. This is not just a book about music and family, but also about 'schizophrenia, hell, money, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored. A truly remarkable feat of storytelling - as funny as it is dark - this is a memoir that sits alongside Lorna Sage's Bad Blood, Clive James' Unreliable Memoirs, Deborah Orr's Motherwell and Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain.