Original Sins: An extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction

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An extraordinarily brave memoir about faith, loss and addiction An extraordinarily brave memoir about faith, family, shame and addiction - an Observer, New Statesman and Sunday Times Book of the Year Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of a minister in an evangelical Christian church. It was a childhood fraught with bitter family conflict and the fear of damnation. After a devastating loss of faith in his late teens, Matt began his search for salvation elsewhere, eventually becoming addicted to crack and heroin - an ordeal that stretched over a decade and culminated in a period of hopeless darkness. Recklessly honest, and as funny as it is grave, Original Sins is an extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction. It's about looking for answers to life's big questions in all the wrong places, how hope can arrive in the most unexpected forms, and how the stories we tell might help us survive. 'Remarkable, funny, arrestingly well-written... Brings to mind Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels, but is also entirely, exhilaratingly its own thing' The Times 'Electric... Artfully structured with novelistic verve... Hill is a blazing talent' Observer 'A beautifully controlled tale of a life spiralling out of control... One of the best books I've read this year' Sunday Times LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE

Reviews

Electric...artfully structured...with novelistic verve... Hill is a blazing talent -- Anthony Cummins * Observer *
His remarkable, funny, arrestingly well-written memoir brings to mind Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels, but is also entirely, exhilaratingly its own thing * The Times *
A beautifully controlled tale of a life spiralling out of control...Original Sins is one of the best books I've read this year, full of vivacity and honesty...To carve such an entertaining and beautifully paced story from such depths of misery suggests a writer of immense gifts -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * Sunday Times *
This book is brilliant. The writing shimmers off the page -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian *
[Hill] deploys dark wit and needle-sharp insight to describe how he swapped a love of Jesus for a love of class-A drugs... devastatingly good... I was blown away * Daily Telegraph *

Author Bio

Matt Rowland Hill was born in 1984 in Pontypridd, south Wales, and grew up in Wales and England. He now lives in London, and Original Sins is his first book.