The Feel-Good Hit of the Year: A Memoir

Description

What happens when a young man adopts the practices of a counterculture, without any of its ethics? Liam Pieper was raised by his bohemian parents to believe in freedom and creativity, and that there's nothing wrong with smoking a little marijuana to make life easier. Nothing if not precocious, he used these lessons to develop a fledgling drug habit and a thriving business selling pot from the back of his pushbike. Liam's adventures as a teen entrepreneur taught him many valuable skills, like how best to enrage a deranged jujitsu master, and how to negotiate pocket money with his parents based on how much he was charging them for an ounce. But from these highs (chemical and otherwise), Liam's life began to spiral down to some striking lows. After a family tragedy and then his arrest on several counts of possession and trafficking, Liam had to pause and ask himself: How the hell did I get here? This is the story of how he got there - from muddled flower child to petty criminal to amoral coke monster - and of how he finally found some kind of way out. Hilarious, compelling and sometimes heartbreaking, The Feel-Good Hit of the Year is a memoir about family, drugs and learning how to live with yourself, from a sharp and original new Australian voice.

Liam Pieper is a Melbourne-based author and journalist. His first book was a memoir, The Feel-Good Hit of the Year, shortlisted for the National Biography Award and the Ned Kelly Best True Crime award. His second was the Penguin Special Mistakes Were Made, a volume of humorous essays. He was co-recipient of the 2014 M Literary Award, winner of the 2015 Geoff Dean Short Story Prize and the inaugural creative resident of the UNESCO City of Literature of Prague. The Toymaker is his first novel.

'Will break your heart and give you chuckles. What more do you want?' - John Safran. 'The most achingly funny, heartsplittingly tragic and brilliantly written book you'll read this year. To lead a deranged, tragic and funny life is one thing, but to make a book this unsentimentally beautiful out of it is nothing short of criminal. Read it before every other goddamn person does.' - Benjamin Law. 'I always knew Liam was talented and I'd always suspected he had a couple screws loose, and now I have proof of both. The Feel-Good Hit of the Year is a brilliant piece of work.' - Anna Krien 'This carefully constructed memoir deftly touches on some of the most difficult subjects: addiction, shame, guilt and the bitter-sweet troubles of family relationships. This is a clever book executed by a skilful writer with a razor-sharp wit... Pieper's book is crazy good. He had me hooked from the first page to the last.' - Krissy Kneen