Review by Booklist Review
Hill's arresting, confessional memoir limns a life of near-fatal drug addiction. The book opens with the author ironically shooting up heroin at the funeral of a friend who has died of a drug overdose, before flashing back to Hill's childhood in Wales and England. The son of an evangelical minister, he becomes increasingly consumed by doubt and, at 18, loses his faith--as, in due course, do his younger brother Jonathan and two sisters. As a university student, he discovers smack (heroin), and, well, "Smack, it was just heartbreakingly lovely." So lovely that he soon becomes addicted, and using heroin and crack five or six times a day becomes a medical necessity. The story of his life as addict is so harrowing that it is often painfully hard to read. Hard to live, too, since at 27 he attempts suicide. Miraculously he survives but is remanded to an inpatient psychiatric ward, and his life becomes an exercise in repeatedly trying to become clean and failing. The book is anything but a failure, though. It's remarkable--beautifully written and wonderfully insightful. Doubt and faith are twin themes that inform the captivating story and, without doubt, will also captivate readers of this extraordinary memoir.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this exquisite and unflinching debut, the son of a Welsh Baptist minister recounts his harrowing spiral into drug addiction. Throughout his life, Hill dealt with contradictions. Raised in Swansea, Wales, in the 1980s, Hill and his three siblings endured childhood trauma in a home "thick with misery" and dominated by a melancholic, taciturn Baptist minister father and a hypercritical mother who regarded any secular pastime as "the works of the devil." With raging hormones during puberty, Hill ran the gauntlet of "temptation, sin, despair, repentance" and by his teens was having sex and surreptitiously downing bottles of whiskey. After struggling to reconcile his strict religious orthodoxy with the less punitive Anglicanism of his prestigious boarding school, Hill eventually renounced his Baptist beliefs, became an atheist, and turned to drugs in college to blot his pain, shame, and guilt. In visceral detail, Hill recounts his descent into intravenous heroin use and the damage it wrought until he found his way to a shaky recovery after 40 days in a London psychiatric ward. Combined with his stunning prose, his clever use of biblical metaphors--which trace his "Genesis," "Rapture," and "Noble Truths"--makes his story of salvation all the more affecting. In a sea of addiction memoirs, this stands out. (July)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Hill's heart-wrenching, emotional tale begins with a sordid account of his drug use at the funeral of a close friend before he takes readers back in time to his childhood as the son of an evangelical Baptist preacher and his devout wife. The piety of the Hill household hid the dysfunction and unhappiness of both parents from outsiders, but Hill and his three siblings were immersed in the deeply unhappy life of their parents. As they grew up, each in turn rejected their parents' faith, and Hill's rejection took the form of atheism and drugs. His experimentation with alcohol quickly turned to other drugs, including cocaine and his preferred drug, heroin. Hill's struggles with heroin in particular led to many overdoses and at least one attempt at self-harm, leading to six weeks of treatment. Hill chronicles his attempts to get and stay clean along with his efforts to rebuild relationships with estranged family members. This compulsively readable book shines a light on the devastating results of the opioid pandemic that exists not just in Hill's native Wales, but also in the U.S. VERDICT This is an exceptionally well-written and heartfelt memoir.--Rebecca Mugridge
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
