Original Sins

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

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

What a frightening and funny book, full of shocking, memorable scenes. I'm glad Matt Rowland Hill lived to tell the tale

Adam Foulds, author of Dream Sequence

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

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

Matt Rowland Hill has gone to the 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 Here Are the Young Men

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 Submarine

A scorching, relentless, absolutely essential read about the roots of addiction and what it takes to save yourself. Hill writes like he has nothing to lose, and like he was born to create this harrowing, utterly transfixing, beautifully wrought portrait of a young man tortured by the twin horrors of family and religion... To take that darkness and make a brilliant, forceful work of literature from it is the holiest alchemy

Merritt Tierce, author of Love Me Back

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. Gripping, hilarious and unforgettable, this is an inspirational survivor's story

Gabriel Byrne

Matt Rowland Hill's marvellous debut, by turns excruciatingly anguished and elatingly funny but always engrossing, is an essential experience for anyone interested in family dynamics, adolescence, class, psychology, theology, or English prose

Leo Robson

Electric...artfully structured...with novelistic verve... Hill is a blazing talent

Anthony Cummins, Observer

A brutally honest reflection on family faith and addition

i

really very good...Hill has a light descriptive touch, but when he aims at poetry, he hits it... Hill's command of tone - his ability to glide beautifully between comedy and horror - has made us trust him happily

Kevin Power, Literary Review

This book is brilliant. The writing shimmers off the page

Kathryn Hughes, Guardian

a tremendous book

Laura Cumming

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

[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

A tour de force

Scotland on Sunday

Original Sins is a wonderful, shimmering book; a tonal triumph that shifts nimbly between funny, poignant, sly and direct. More than that, within its propulsive, psychologically honest pages, is a genuine wisdom

Rebecca Watson, author of Little Scratch

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

Geoff Dyer

Matt Rowland Hill writes so beautifully and with such intelligence and precision, such elegance and control, that really, I'd happily read his thoughts on the most mundane of matters. But Original Sins is certainly not that. It's a startlingly candid memoir of addiction, faith, loss, family, anguish, despair, hope, love. It's simultaneously devastating and genuinely funny, and a reading experience of the highest order

Wendy Erskine

Hill is an engaging and reliable narrator of his own chaotic downfall, with plenty of charm to medicate the horror... his account is both eloquent and heartfelt

Times Literary Supplement

Beautifully written... searing, angry and comic

Church Times

Harrowing but excruciatingly funny

New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

[A] blazing debut... Electric from page one

Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*

Scabrously funny... Were his account a novel, you might accuse it of being too far-fetched

Guardian, *Books of the Year*

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

Original Sins is a memoir that reads like a novel; a brilliant one. Matt Rowland Hill's struggle to overcome the perfect storm of his upbringing and addiction makes for a great story, but it's the blend of artistry, wit and skilfully timed stabs of brutality that make it such a vivid and thrilling experience. It's not that I didn't want to put the book down, more that it wouldn't release me from its grip

Chris Power

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

Brilliant... lively, engaging and extremely well written - scrupulously, painfully honest... sharply funny

Pandora Sykes, Substack

Daniel Hawksford provides a richly textured narration, conveying the absurdities of Hill's evangelical upbringing and the agony and chaos of his addiction... Original Sins is full of moments of dark farce

Guardian