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

A wildly original and gripping debut, told with humour and compassion, about what it means to survive

Christie Watson

What a frightening, funny book this is, full of acute observations and shocking, memorable scenes. It adds up to an exceptional portrait of overlapping addictions to fundamentalist religion and narcotics, their ecstasies and miseries, and the ultimate failure of their different, desperate attempts to fill the same personal void

Adam Foulds

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

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

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

I tore through this brilliant, fearless book. From the first page to the last, it's funny, insightful and beautifully written

Joe Dunthorne

This book is 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. I couldn't put it down and when I finished reading, I realized I've been waiting for someone to tell the brutal truth about all this. To go all the way into the deepest dark of it, to break my heart in exactly this terrifying way. To take that darkness and make a brilliant, forceful work of literature from it is the holiest alchemy, and is itself Hill's masterful and unbelievably hard-won answer to the question: What will save us? Only art

Merritt Tierce

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