3.5 ⭐, rounded up

I think I am proudest of making it through this entire book without vomiting once.

(ETA: I was in my first trimester of pregnancy at the time, so triggers were not exactly welcome!)

I want to tell you about this fucking book. I want to tell it in the most straightforward way I can but without bypassing the inspiration this book has confided in me to write in the most passionate and artistic way as I possible. As the author of this book was trying to say, "Every form of self-expression is Art, be it writing or taking a shit. Both can be the same in some respect." I know. I made that up. That just came out. And I'm not gonna fucking delete that.

First and foremost, I dare you name a contemporary author who is more anxious to make the reader grip the arm of this chair, clench his teeth, hold his unblinking eyes, writhe in psychological, emotional, even physical pain, and make him smoke excessively while turning the pages of this morbidly, brutally unfiltered, murderously honest rendition of the experiences of his life...I thought so. You can't. Because there is no other piece of writing that is more breathtaking in its attempt to blow your mind by summing up in a few hundred pages a man's flamboyant commitment to a beautiful story than the A Million Little Pieces by James Fucking Frey. Am I being highfalutin? Well, pardon me as I burst into flames...I don't give a shit.

It was my friends who introduced me to James, telling me that reading the book is a struggle uncommon to the types of books that we routinely exchange. As it was hard for me to relate to their testimony about the book being unforgiving to the their psychological, emotional, and physical reading experience; the many times they cringe from metaphysical pain and have them gorge into excessive smoking and even of drinking coffee so much as well as cussing and swearing casually, and even the habit of retaliating to my inquisitions with such poetic eloquence that I damn near spanked them, literally, had not used that light-blue paperbound as a shield. That's when I took the book from their hands and started reading it. I flipped straight to the first page, and the first two sentences had instilled to me an awakening unique to that of the previous books that I've devoured. It was outstanding, or if I may say: electrifying.

Though I said that I bazooka'd straight to the first page, this doesn't mean that I had skipped the book's unforgettable introduction. It was simply (simply would be an injustice for the prose that would follow would be quite a mind fuck, at least for me) this:

The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel.
I broke something, Old Man.
How badly is it broken?
It's in a million little pieces.
I'm afraid I can't help you.
Why?
There's nothing you can do.
Why?
It can't be fixed.
Why?
It's broken beyond repair. It's in a million little pieces.

Now, I'll try to epitomize the story. Because it's about the story, they say. And the story of AMLP is unparalleled. The first page began with the first scene describing on how James woke up in a plane, his front teeth missing (four of them), he's bleeding from his head and face to his shirt like shit, he has all kind of ominous fluids soaking his shirt---could be saliva, blood, phlegm, vomit, mostly vomit; and, suspiciously, shit---and an indescribable pain in this entire body, especially from his stomach. But the holistic story in this book started from James's childhood; how he felt an extreme disdain against his parents( a negative emotion that he calls the 'fury'.) Out of this, he goes out doing all kinds of rebellious act against society despite the lavish attention that his mom and dad had given him. Eventually, he nosedived to alcohol addiction for ten years and drug addiction for three years, in between which he lived a virulent life, drinking every alcohol, eating every pill, snorted cocaine and all kinds of addictive shit. There's even a story thought not part of a book, but I've read somewhere that he made hookers snort coke lines on his cock. He's my hero. Ha-ha-ha. Ultimately, he was sent by his parents to a center in Minnesota, and there he lived happily ever after...just kidding. There he finds out from the doctors the intensity of his unhealthiness due to drug and alcohol addiction, that is if he refuse abstinence from alcohol and crack, he'd be dead in less than a week. James was like, "Well...Fuck."

Fuck. You get this word in the entire book almost endlessly.

Well, James was a nut-crack, the kind of venerable one. He refuses to be treated the way the institution is trying to force him to do, he stays but he refuses to listen to their counsel, especially the AA therapy where doctors feed you the God cure, which James refused with rock-hard stubbornness.

But where's the inspiration from this character? How can a child possibly draw encouragement from a person I am describing? Inspiration is there alright. But it has to be determined by the reader subjectively, of course. But I'll tell you how his story inspired me: James, to me, is like an allegorical friend that shows you the how a man's body can malevolently be broken, but as long as his spirit is intact, he cannot perish. I'm speaking like an idiot from the 19th century. But James was a man who believed in the omnipotence of Love, and how in spite of one's mental demolition, it is still possible to love genuinely. And that love is enough, really.

The style in which the book was written was certainly reflective to the author's frame of mind. It was disorganized, the words scattered, the punctuations are missing, e.g., he quotation marks in dialogues, also some attribution tags. If you're a copyeditor like me, you'd most likely take a lighter and light the manuscript, it doesn't matter if it's in a softcopy, you'll burn your computer. But get this: as a reader, I wouldn't want it any other way. It was absolutely, irrefutably necessary to make the book the legend that it is.

Break it down.

I will not talk about the Oprah issue because it's really irrelevant to my experience about the book. "A book is a book, bitch" what more do you want?

My advice to you? Fuck this book, make love with it three times or as much times as you can. That's an order.

PS: Don't flag my review just yet. This is my first time, be gentle.

This is the saddest, dumbest, most pathetic piece of male power fantasy ever written.

"Okay, so like this one time I was a total drug addict. I totally did more drugs than anyone else and no one else would have lived if they did as many drugs as me. Anyway, then I had like all these cuts and there was blood everywhere and my teeth went through my face. Yeah. And then, like, the doctors were going to sew me up and do surgery and stuff--like, really painful surgery, like, literally as painful as a root canal, and they couldn't give me any pain killer because of all the other drugs and me being an addict and whatever, so I could feel everything, and I just, like, held on really tight and let them do it. Yeah. And then there was the rehab place, and like, there were tough guys who were maybe going to fight me, but I just like, looked at them, and then they knew to leave me alone. Cuz I'm just really, like, hardcore. And there was this federal judge guy, like really important, and he totally couldn't handle his shit, and he was all, "what do I do?" And I told him how to handle his shit, and then he like, made it so I didn't have to go to prison for any of the stuff I did, because I basically saved his life. And then there was this mafia guy, he basically adopted me as his son, so I'm like, tight with the Godfather and stuff. Oh, and there was a chick, she was really into me, but then she died or something."

Ritmo incalzante



Senza un attimo di respiro. Ti droghi, sei ridotto come una larva, entri in comunità e piano piano, piano piano torni alla vita, mettendoci l'anima e anche qualcosa di più, senza un attimo di respiro, senza sconti.
Sembrava si trattasse di un'autobiografia, poi lo scandalo da Oprah Winfrey ha fatto saltare fuori la verità, ma la qualità della scrittura è indiscutibile (tranne sul finale quando diventa un po' tutto "volemose bene" e un po' troppo new age per i miei gusti).
Per il resto un capolavoro letterario.

As usual I am a bit late to the party having never heard of this book until someone recommended it to me at a party in May 2017! When I mentioned it on my book group it appears the entire world had heard about it and read it, which obviously led me to download it immediately and read it.

I am not going to lie and say it’s a easy read or a brilliant book, it’s bloody harrowing and painful and raw. If you have any knowledge of addictions, the 12 step programme or rehab then this book doesn’t just speak to you, it shouts and screams and cries and hurts.

A Million Little Pieces was originally published in 2003 as a factual memoir and in September 2005 was picked up as an Oprah’s Book Club selection which then became the number 1 paperback non-fiction book on Amazon and topped the New York Time Best Seller List for 15 straight weeks. In 2008 after a six-week investigation it was revealed that the book contained fabrications and was not a completely factual memoir.

Whether the controversy surrounding this book is true or false, this is an eye-opening, harrowing and breathtakingly painful book to read which I believe will stay with me for years and years.

My best friend was reading it maybe 6 years ago. I went over her house one day to hang out. After realizing that she wouldn't be putting that book down anytime soon, I complained about wasting my time and she had me read one page, any page. I understood why she wasn't putting it down and let her be.

Years later, after book club hype and before memoir controversy, my mom had me read it. I've always been open minded in terms of memoirs and their relativity to fact. This wasn't the first time truths have been stretched in memoirs, it only received such an incredible response because Oprah felt like an asshole and as far as book sales are concerned, shes the god of high sales. The reason why I personally didn't automatically believe it was all 100% true while reading it is because this man is trying to remember things he did while he was messed up long ago. I don't remember what happened last night when I was drunk, but I can come up with a concept in my head of what happened through what I do remember (or perceive) and through what I was told from others with me. Even Larry King admitted in his interview with Frey that he had difficulty remembering things from his past when he wrote his own memoir.

I personally didn't mind that he stretched the truth and changed names and is now considered a liar. The book was good, thats all. My favorite concept that I got from reading this book was the descriptive writing made me almost feel his pain and I found it interesting that I felt better the more that he got better; from nausia and emotionally draining to clean and feeling a sense of relief.

I wont read it again, only because once was enough for me. But, I'm still a fan. It also helps to have read the second book. Maybe he should write a story about his life after the controversy. Hopefully he didnt start back on the drinking after everyone giving him so much shit, he looked terrible on the second Oprah appearance.

For someone who lied about a lot of what happened, this was still an exceptionally boring book. Seriously, if you're going to make stuff up because your story is already not very interesting the worst thing you can do is have it still not be interesting when you are done. FAIL.

I got to read this book just a couple of months before the Oprah controversy broke. I remember speaking about it to the Social Work Practice class I taught at the time and noted that I wasn't at all convinced that it was "true." But I did think it had some interesting material in it if you could look past the quite serious horseshit*: the oral surgery, the romantic embraces, the endless vomiting, and ultimately, the heroic vindication.

I certainly enjoyed watching Frey squirm as he tried to parse what he understood is meant by "memoir" as if he were not the only person in existence who understands it that way.

What was good was some of the perception (after you remove the intense egoism of Frey) of the co-residents of his particular unit. I treat dozens of people a week. They aren't all whores with hearts of gold, or Mafiosi with souls of poets, but they are all real humans who have been beaten up and beaten down by something that has gotten way out of their control. And they all deserve the chance to get better and get on with life. Frey catches a bit of that.

What was bad is the relentless Freyism that states that you don't have to seriously address your behavior or your underlying character in order to beat an addiction. Frey goes into treatment as a jerk, behaves in treatment as a jerk, and leaves treatment as a jerk. Doesn't work that way. Frey seems to ascribe his "success" to his adamant refusal to be a nice guy and listen to anyone else's perspective.

Basically, the book never was a redemptive saga of a person caught up in drugs and crime. James Frey was essentially a nobody, with some minor traffic violations, maybe doing a little weed, some pills or even some cocaine. Not much to make a book. So he creates a fictional uber-James Frey. It wasn't a little weed or blow, it was drug doses that would kill a normal street junkie. Not a petty disorderly conduct, it was hard time on the Rock sparring with hardbody street toughs. Not a treatment where you sit in groups and listen for hours, it was railing with your strong will against the mind-numbing, soul-destroying system. At certain points, I almost rolled on the floor with laughter.

How do you get spectacular redemption unless you blow everything way out of proportion? Real treatment and redemption in the real world takes months and months (and years and years) of looking at yourself and making thousands of little changes in what you think and feel and do. Instead, Frey offers a formula where there is an inherent nobility and redemption in being a jerk.

*horseshit is a technical term in the literature wheeze

This book is very well written, but has a unique format because it is choppy. The only paragraphs that are long are when James explains his inner thoughts which just seem like a run on. I think this is helpful when it comes to providing insight on what he was truly feeling at a time. A negative side to this book is that a couple parts of his memoir were proven to be made up. This made me trust the author less, but I continued to read the book because it still showed true emotion. Overall, I liked the book and was able to separate the author from the piece of work.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey is that book you read tell friends about then debate if it's real or not and everyone of you are going to have a different opinion.
It starts with a man of 23 on a plane on his way to rehab to start the fight with his horrendous demons (drink and drug and LOTS of them) and his determination to fight them.
I'm along the lines of half and half,I found it to be a emotionally charged read with certain circumstances that were very very graphic also shocking ( oh the details of throwing up

There are too many real stories in this world that are simply marvelous. Why would I waste my time on science fiction like this BS!? It's a shame because the writing was pretty good. Mr. Frey would have been better off just calling it fiction. In my opinion of course..

If I could rate this lower I would. I couldn't finish it. I got less than half way and I couldn't take it anymore.

I don't care about the Oprah fiasco. I didn't read it because it was on her reads list. I only read what sounds interesting to me. Except in this case. A friend wanted me to read it so I did. Well, as much as I could anyway. I was irritated from the get go by the formatting. There was no quotation marks despite all the dialogue.

Things were written like this.
All the time.
This was the dialogue format.
It was annoying as fuck.
And if itty bitty sentences weren't used then they were constant runs on that didn't even have an commas or anything and there was so much repeating repeating repeating repeating repeating repeating of a few words.

My dog likes to get in the way when I'm on my laptop. He likes to type to people and I kid you not, my dog does better punctuation than this guy.

This guy... I didn't read the book as non-fiction. I just read it as a book. I let the writer build the world and I went along for the ride. But the ride was utter bullshit. The characters were horrible. And not in the "he's a bad person" sort of way. I've come across a lot of purely villainous characters in the past. But they at least were well written.

His rebellion against the twelve step program wasn't brave and ballsy as he tried to make it out to be. Honestly, it was just annoying. And I can't count how many times he went off about one more drink would kill him, etc. And I don't give a damn if this is "based off a true story" or whatever. I wished the guy would just take that drink. I wanted him to drink so he would die and never open his mouth again.

I forced myself to get half way through this book. Then I thought about my huge TBR list and how it's so full of books I'm excited to read. Life's just too short to waste on books you hate, so I closed it and I'm never cracking it open again. I'm just thankful I borrowed it and didn't waste money on it.