“…from that day on I was a sitting duck…I didn’t know if it was night or day, morning or afternoon.”

Butterfly on a Pin is Alannah Hill’s memoir from her difficult upbringing to becoming one of Australia’s most successful fashion designers. This is a not a story of just Alannah Hill. It’s a story of becoming Alannah Hill and evolving into who you are outside of a name, a brand and the places that you started from.

Hill’s writing is witty and eccentric. I listened to the audiobook and loved hearing her narrate the book. The voices she chose for particular people in her life and the way she describes them are great. These are all things that would bring me back for a re-listen one day, now that I understand her story better.

This is an engaging and interesting read, but it is also emotionally difficult and confronting. Some of the subject matter of Hill’s experiences are not easy to read or digest. As I was reading myself, I did periodically take steps away after reading particular troubling events. 

“If I keep staring back into the past, my future would never glimmer”

Invention and reinvention are key themes in the memoir. First, there’s the young Alannah trying to find her way to fashion after her unstable and difficult childhood. There’s adult Alannah entering the world of fashion design and the world of business. As she enters the later phases of adulthood and becomes a mother, we see reflections of her life, and her upbringing in transformative ways. For me, this is where Butterfly on a Pin is most powerful in its storytelling.

Reading how Hill took those early experiences into adulthood and then later as a mother herself, were really quite intriguing to read. There can be traumatic events that happen in our lives, we can sometimes look on those that should love us with deep mistrust, how do we resolve that through our experiences? How do we go on through the decades and make sense of all those things?

“Reinvention became my weapon to deal with the world”

Butterfly on a Pin is a brilliantly engaging memoir. The relationships Hill builds on her journey through life, especially of that with her mother and how that evolves after becoming a mother herself, were particularly moving.

I highly recommend this memoir, even if you don’t know Alannah’s story or her fashion brands. It is a glimpse into 1980s and 1990s Australia, and a woman’s reinvention through childhood trauma and difficulty.

Content warning: this memoir does contain some detail relating to child abuse and sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers.