About the Book:

A memoir of love, despair and reinvention.

Unflinching, funny, shocking, inspiring and tender: this is a story like no other.

Alannah Hill, one of Australia’s most successful fashion designers, created an international fashion brand that defied trends with ornamental, sophisticated elegance, beads, bows and vintage florals. But growing up in a milk bar in Tasmania, Alannah’s childhood was one of hardship, fear and abuse. At an early age she ran away from home with eight suitcases of costumes and a fierce determination to succeed, haunted by her mother’s refrain of ‘You’ll never amount to anything, you can’t sew, nobody likes you and you’re going to end up in a shallow grave, dear!’

At the height of her success, Alannah walked the razor’s edge between two identities – the ‘good’ Alannah and the ‘mongrel bastard’ Alannah. Who was the real Alannah Hill? Reprieve came in the form of a baby boy and the realisation that becoming a mother not only changes your life, but completely refurbishes it, forever.

Yet ‘having it all’ turned out to be another illusion. In 2013 Alannah walked away from her eponymous brand, a departure that left her coming apart at the seams. She slowly came to understand the only way she could move forward was to go back. At the heart of it all was her mother, whose loveless marriage and disappointment in life had a powerful and long-lasting effect on her daughter. It was finally time to call a truce with the past.   

This extraordinary book is the fierce and intelligent account of how a freckle-faced teenage runaway metamorphosed into a trailblazer and true original.

Published by Hardie Grant Publishing

Released May 2018

My Thoughts:

I’m going to start with three points:

• I can’t stand misery memoirs that read like trauma porn/blame your parents for your garbage life diatribes – this is nothing like that.
• This is the best memoir I have ever read, and I’m extremely choosy with memoirs (for why see above point).
• This is a memoir that comes to life as an audio, read by Alannah Hill herself, in all her enthusiastic glory. It’s so entertaining, like nothing I’ve ever listened to before. You won’t get the full Aileen Hill (Alannah’s mother) effect by reading it. For that, and believe me, you need that, you’ll have to listen to Alannah reading as her mother. It’s both hilarious and tragic, the things Aileen would say and the way she would say them.

From a childhood trauma that combined neglect, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, to the eccentric Queen of the Australian fashion industry, this is a story of so much about a woman who is quite literally a self-made wonder. Cancelled from her own label before cancel culture was even a thing, a rapid and successful come-back, only to step away from it all in favour of taking stock, battling cancer, and being the best mother she could be. Alannah Hill, I salute you. Self-depreciating, unflinchingly honest, sad and funny, Butterfly on a Pin is not just a memoir, it’s a love letter to a mother that couldn’t mother, a thank you to those who loved Alannah Hill fashion and still do, a beacon of hope for survivors of child abuse, and a testimony to hard work, long hours, and soldiering on. Brilliant. Absolutely marvellous.