Matt Rowland Hill: ‘My mother says she will sue me if I ever write another book like it’

The author of Original Sins, an account of addiction and shame, on his book’s impact on his evangelical parents, reading the Patrick Melrose series while waiting for drug dealers, and how looking middle class saved him from arrestMatt Rowland Hill, 38, is the author of Original Sins, about growing up as the son of a baptist minister before falling into a decade-long addiction to heroin while studying at Oxford. Out in paperback, it was longlisted for last year’s Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction while being praised by Geoff Dyer for its “novelistic virtues of vivid scene-making, fully realised characterisation and psychological subtlety”. Hill and I sat in a park near his home in east London.I might have read this as a novel had it not been subtitled “a memoir”.The subtitle wasn’t my choice: I was open to it being published as fiction if my publisher had wanted that. I approached it like a novel, thinking about point of view and how I’d produce moments of irony and humour, which maybe liberated me to write with an emotional distance that paradoxically allowed me to be more honest. Nothing is fabricated. I did go to psychiatric units. I was a heroin addict for all that time. I used my imagination to make vivid the bits of dialogue or details about what we were wearing, although it’s surprising how detailed your recollections are once you dig in; what my father told my mother on that car ride to Guernsey – “If you died tonight, I’d dance on your grave” – was scored into... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2023-04-29 17:00:41 UTC ]
News tagged with: #east london #father told #observer order #delivery charges

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Publishers Sue Internet Archive Over Free E-Books

Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Wiley accused the nonprofit of piracy for making over 1 million books free online. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2020-06-01 17:13:29 UTC ]
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Nurse Christie Watson writes second book for Chatto

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[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-20 10:43:53 UTC ]
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National Book Tokens and Puffin launch children's writing contest

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[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-17 13:20:46 UTC ]
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[ Literrary Hub | 2020-05-07 18:22:48 UTC ]
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Mother’s Day book picks by Delia Owens, Jennifer Weiner, Kiley Reid and more

We asked 16 authors to pick their favorite books about mother-child relationships. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-05-06 07:46:44 UTC ]
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In Sue Monk Kidd’s ‘The Book of Longings,’ Jesus has a wife — and behold, she’s so woke!

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[ The Washington Post | 2020-04-21 15:58:55 UTC ]
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[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-17 08:48:38 UTC ]
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[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-09 17:30:46 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-08 11:15:05 UTC ]
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[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-10 16:57:41 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-05 04:00:53 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-04 18:37:26 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-21 17:35:28 UTC ]
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Eliud Kipchoge is writing a memoir(!) and other notable book deals of the week.

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[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-18 13:31:21 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-10-11 04:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-24 03:37:08 UTC ]
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[ The New York Times | 2019-09-05 17:47:28 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2019-08-06 12:45:53 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2019-08-06 01:15:31 UTC ]
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