Don Paterson is one of our most acclaimed contemporary poets, possessed of "an infinite sensitivity to the world" (Zadie Smith). But his current standing gives few hints of his hilariously misspent youth. An indifferent student prone to obsessions (with girls at school and . . . origami), Paterson nevertheless made clear early on his immense gift for observation. In Toy Fights, he vividly re-creates the customs of the Scottish working class, from the titular childhood game ("basically twenty minutes of extreme violence without pretext") to the virtues of the sugary sweet known as tablet. When American pop culture arrived, Paterson fell hard for the so-called outlaw sound; by his teens, he was traveling with his father, a Stetson-wearing "country" musician, and becoming guitar-mad himself. A memoir of family, music, and highly inventive profanity, Toy Fights is an unforgettable account of the years we all spend in rehearsal for real life.
'A classic of its kind.' William Boyd 'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant.' Scotsman 'A work of dazzling craft.' Times Literary Supplement 'A memoir in a million.' Sunday Times
'A book that swan-dives into the filthy waters of growing up and resurfaces clear-eyed, bearing pearls.' Financial Times 'Paterson is arguably Scotland's finest writer at work today, his sense of the absurd is acutely honed, his wisdom hard-won.' The National 'Wonderful, aggressively wise and always - especially at its most serious - devastatingly funny.' Geoff Dyer
Author
About Don Paterson
Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. He works as a musician and editor, and teaches at the University of St Andrews. His most recent collection, Rain, won the Forward Prize and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009.
