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parsed(2022-07-05) - pubdate: 2022-07-05
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pub date: 1656997200
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Original Sins

A Memoir

July 5, 2022 | Trade paperback
ISBN: 9781443461726
$24.99
Reader Reward Price: $22.49 info
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Description

There have been two great loves in Matt Rowland Hill's life so far: Jesus and heroin. Hill grew up the son of a minister in a strict Baptist church. After a crisis of loss of faith, he obsessively turned to literature before becoming addicted to crack and heroin in his early twenties. Hill's addiction stretched over a decade, culminating in a suicide attempt and weeks in a secure psychiatric unit. After undergoing rehabilitation, which forced him to confront the religion he had spent his whole life running from, he finally got clean.

Original Sins is an extraordinary memoir of faith, family, loss, shame and addiction, but ultimately it is about survival, growing up and learning to live. Recklessly honest, it's as hilarious as it is grave, courageous and compulsive. It has echoes of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Tara Westover's Educated, but it is firmly its own very special thing, too.

About this Author

ISBN: 9781443461726
Format: Trade paperback
Pages: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-07-05

Reviews

"A comic tour de force . . . a world of scuzzy mayhem and accelerating recklessness . . . It's a bit like Edward St. Aubyn's Melrose novels crossed with Adrian Mole's diaries . . . a beautifully controlled tale of a life spiralling out of control . . . one of the best books I've read this year, full of vivacity and honesty . . . . To carve an entertaining and beautifully paced story from the depths of misery suggests a writer of immense gifts. I can't wait to see what Matt Rowland Hill does next." -- Sunday Times (UK)

"Electric . . . Rowland Hill is a blazing talent." -- The Guardian

"Original Sins is one of the best books I've read this year, full of vivacity and honesty. It's bursting with love, but love withheld and warped, doubted and misunderstood. To carve such an entertaining and beautifully paced story from such depths of misery suggests a writer of immense gifts. I can't wait to see what Matt Rowland Hill does next." -- The Times (UK)

"Dark wit and needle-sharp insight . . . I was blown away." -- Daily Telegraph (UK)

"Exquisite and unflinching . . . stunning prose. . . . In a sea of addiction memoirs, this stands out." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A courageous and often shocking book about the plague of addiction. Yet Original Sins is written with a wild, brilliant humour that offsets the horror. I found Matt Rowland Hill's story inspirational. A survivor's story that's gripping, hilarious and unforgettable." -- Gabriel Byrne, author of Walking with Ghosts

"Matt Rowland Hill guides us to the edge of devastation, and doesn't flinch from the ache of addiction, family anguish and inward despair. But this is a book that's optimistic to the core, as honest about grief as it is about joy. I won't forget it." -- Jessica J. Lee, author of Two Trees Make a Forest and Turning

"A stunningly well-written, funny, heartrending and utterly gripping memoir about learning how to live with who we are. Read it. Read it now." -- Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall

"What a frightening and funny book, full of shocking, memorable scenes. I'm glad Matt Rowland Hill lived to tell the tale. An exceptional portrait of overlapping addictions, and the ultimate failure of their different, desperate attempts to fill the same personal void." -- Adam Foulds, author of In the Wolf's Mouth

"Matt Rowland Hill has gone to depths of himself and emerged with something unique, graceful, piercingly smart, and devilishly funny. Many books have been written about addiction. Original Sins is unlike all of them, and stands among the very best." -- Rob Doyle, author of Autobibliography and Threshold

"A wildly original and gripping debut, told with humour and compassion, about what it means to survive." -- Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness

"Original Sins is a shattering portrait of addiction--it's generously open, desperately honest and confronting. While it is heartbreaking, there is humour and compassion. It's a journey through darkness, against fear, to finding the light in oneself." -- Catherine Cho, author of Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness

"I tore through this brilliant, fearless book. From the first page to the last, it's funny, insightful and beautifully written." -- Joe Dunthorne, author of The Adulterants and Submarine

"Hill's surviving his journey through religious fundamentalism into hardcore drug addiction is an accomplishment. His writing this memoir--unflinching, heart-rending, funny, insightful as hell--is a triumph. This is a phenomenal book." -- Antoine Wilson, author of Mouth to Mouth and The Interloper

"Ignore, for a moment, the unignorable facts of Matt Rowland Hill's life. Ultimately it's the novelistic virtues of vivid scene-making, fully realized characterization and psychological subtlety that make Original Sins such an extraordinary book."  -- Geoff Dyer

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