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 arrest

Matt 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 my childhood memory.

Original Sins by Matt Rowland Hill is published in paperback on 4 May by Vintage (£10.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Continue reading...

source https://oto.oto-login.com/

Nhận xét

Đăng nhận xét

Bài đăng phổ biến từ blog này

Half-witted, reckless Librium Liz may be even worse than May and Johnson | John Crace

Robotic PM displayed zero awareness in radio interviews of the damage she has done First, an apology. I should never have christened Theresa May “the Maybot”. With hindsight, she appears positively emotionally present. Touchy-feely. Almost functional. If not entirely competent. Certainly not the 1980s piece of Amstrad junk she always seemed when she was running the country. If you can call it that. But the Tories are just playing with us. It’s as if the members said: “So you think David Cameron is useless? Just wait until we give you Theresa.” And once we’d all had about enough of May, they gave us a narcissistic, sociopathic liar instead. Continue reading... source https://oto.oto-login.com/
Đọc thêm

The White Lotus season two review – this immaculate show’s writing is utterly unrivalled

The glorious, layered comedy-drama is back – with sex on its mind. Set in Sicily, impeccable turns come from Jennifer Coolidge and new faces including Aubrey Plaza It is a measure of just how good the first series of The White Lotus was – the writing, the blending of murder mystery and sharp satire, the performances, the direction, the gorgeous photography even under lockdown conditions – that although people do vividly remember the turd being curled out into a guest’s suitcase by a man driven to the edge of tolerance, they remember it as only part of a flawlessly executed whole. Now the show’s creator, Mike White, is back with another carefully curated batch of overprivileged guests at his mercy. This time they are being cared for by the staff – and sex workers – at the White Lotus hotel in Sicily instead of Hawaii, and White’s beady moral eye is on sexual rather than racial politics. The writing is as dense and layered as ever, the plotting is immaculate and the viewers’ sympathie
Đọc thêm

Chris Ashton reaches try milestone in Leicester’s thrashing of Exeter

Leicester 62-19 Exeter Ashton scores hat-trick for 101st Premiership try Try-scoring 101 for Chris Ashton. English rugby’s most prolific finisher cemented his status as the Premiership’s greatest ever try-scorer by becoming the first player in the history of the competition to reach 100 tries, running in a hat-trick in Leicester’s dominant win over Exeter. Ashton, who last week announced he is retiring at the end of the season, began the match on 98 but the 36-year-old wasted little time in racing to three figures before adding his third on the day and his 101st in total. His cause was helped by three yellow cards to Exeter – two for Olly Woodburn which meant a red for the Chiefs wing – but here was a reminder of just how deadly Ashton remains. His were three of nine tries for Leicester, who have now all but confirmed their place in the playoffs. They were caused problems by Exeter in the first half but the champions are timing their end-of-season run formidably. Ashton deserves t
Đọc thêm