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A Million Little Pieces

james frey

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Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, this is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. It is also the introduction of a bold and talented literary voice.
Before considering reading this book, please see the BookBrowse note on the book jacket/review page.

BookBrowse Note: January 9th 2006: An article in the Smoking Gun claimed that James Frey (author of A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard) fabricated key parts of his books. They cited police records, court documents and interviews with law enforcement agents which belie a number of Frey's claims regarding criminal charges against him, jail terms and his fugitive status.

In an interview with the Smoking Gun, Frey admitted that he had 'embellished central details' in A Million Little Pieces and backtracked on claims he made in the book.

January 26th 2006. Frey's publisher stated that while it initially stood by him, after further questioning of the author, the house has "sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished." It will be adding a a publisher's note and author's note to all future editions of A Million Little Pieces.

448 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1,2003
Places
minnesota, 

This edition

Format
448 pages, Library Binding
Published
September 22, 2005 by Turtleback Books
ISBN
9781417699940
ASIN
1417699949
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • James Frey

    James Frey

    James Christopher Frey (born September 12, 1969) is an American writer and Founder/CEO of Full Fathom Five, a transmedia production company responsible for the New York Times bestselling Young Adult series "The Lorien Legacies", the first book of which I ...

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About the author

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james frey

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James Christopher Frey is an American writer and businessman. His first two books, A Million Little Pieces (2003) and My Friend Leonard (2005), were bestsellers marketed as memoirs. Large parts of the stories were later found to be exaggerated or fabricated, sparking a media controversy. His 2008 novel Bright Shiny Morning was also a bestseller.
Frey is the founder and CEO of Full Fathom Five. A transmedia production company, FFF is responsible for the young adult adventure/science fiction series The Lorien Legacies of seven books written by Frey and others, under the collective pen name Pittacus Lore. Frey's first book of the series, I Am Number Four (2010), was made into a feature film by DreamWorks Pictures. He is also the CEO of NYXL, an esports organization based in New York.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
21(21%)
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42(42%)
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36(36%)
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99 reviews All reviews
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unebun
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I know why this book either will "sit" on certain shelves, or perhaps none at all. Despite the difficulty (due to various personal reasons) of reading it, as well as what was/is left behind from doing so, there are many wordless shelves into which this book will not fit. Some books do that to the mind, heart, and/or the soul. In other words, I'm writing this review because I don't yet know what to say, and perhaps I never will.

However, for those of you who know, who found in one way or another, about the controversy regarding this writer and whether or not he truly experienced what happened behind the words, well let me just say this. Whether or not he experienced it firsthand, someone did. And the fact that someone knew what that "forever-altering" sort of life lived can be like, whether personally, or witnessed through the eyes and experience of a friend or foe... one sort of overwhelming way or another... Reading this book is worth the while of those previously mentioned, or anyone else at all. Anyone...

Therefore, for the time being, this book remains "shelf-less".
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CherryCat
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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."
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SylveonQueen
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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"A Million Little Pieces" is James Frey's recollection of his days in a rehabilitation center. He woke up on a plane not remembering anything and his parents decided to admit him to a program called the Twelve Steps. He described everything from surgery to landscape graphically, often in horrific details. The story is told in the first person perspective. I believe the author did this on purpose to put forward his point of view but sometimes there are fallacies in his line of reasoning.

James Frey uses short sentences and repeat certain phrases to emphasize what he says. It's like staccato in music. Short, brief and repetitive. Sometimes the sentences are random and run over another. It is indistinguishable where one sentence ends and another begins because the lack of punctuations. However, that way the readers are able to follow the author's rapid and unsystematic train of thought.

I didn't know anything about the controversy over "A Million Little Pieces." I knew about it after I started reading the book and I don't understand why people make such a fuss about the book being fiction or non-fiction. As far as I'm concerned James Frey has a story to tell and the book was written based on the his experience and memory, regardless the objective truth of his memory. I know how fickle human memory is. Sometimes you remember things not as they were but as it were to be, distort it as you want it to be.

Despite the embellishment, glorification, and controversy over the book, I think James Frey did a great job telling the life he had as he remembers it. I don't see anything wrong with the way he tells the story. He is writing a novel, not a term paper or a thesis. As Arthur Golden put it in "Memoirs of A Geisha," a memoir is different from a biography. So there is bound to be distortion because it is written as the author remembers it, not as how another person might objectively observe it as in a biography.




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tsundereputa
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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It was no surprise when it came out he fictionalized parts-except maybe that Oprah believed him.
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The_Syekh
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I read this after the scandal of Frey's embellishments came out. I found I was angry through the entire book, but once I committed to over 100 pages, I felt I had to finish it. When all is said and done, I'm not sure what to believe and what to discard as fantasy.
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XaniaVentra
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I read this book knowing that parts of the story were embellished, even though it was marketed as a memoir. So with that out of the way, I could read it as a story based on a true story.

This story details the author's rehabilitation at the age of 23 after he had spent over a decade abusing alcohol and drugs. He hits rock bottom and in desperation his family books him into a treatment facility, where he goes on a journey about what it means to be an addict and how one can deal with the addiction.

He rejects the 12 steps, and looks at overcoming addiction in a very enlightening way. I don't know much about addiction, but I found this book very interesting and I enjoyed the gritty details.

The writing style is a bit odd, with no real application of proper grammar, but it's an engaging story that kept me riveted.
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Aryan_Bawane
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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"As I looked around the room I saw that she was reading a book in one of the beds. Light streamed through one of the windows and across her face and I had never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in my life. If my heart had stopped at that moment I woul dhave fallen happy and fallen full and I would have seen in life all that I had wanted to see and all that I needed to see. Fall. Let me fall."

"... her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and if she let me go right now I would fall and the need and confusion and fear and regret and horror and shame and weakness and fragility are exposed to the soft strength of her open arms..."

"... [she] cradles me like a broken child. My face and her shoulder and her shirt and her hair are wet with my tears. I slow down and I start to breath slowly and deeply and her hair smells clean and I open my eyes because I want to see it and it is all that I can see. It is... radiant with moisture. I want to touch it amd O reach with one of my hands and I run my hand from the crown along her neck and her back to the base of her rib and it is a thin perfect sheer and I let it slowly drop from the tips of my fingers and when it is gone I miss it."

"When she walks in my heart jumps and my hands shake and me myself inside settles it settles and those things for which there are no words ignite and they start firing firing firing."

"The first time I saw you, my heart fell. The second time I saw you, my heart fell. The third time fourth time fifth time and every time since, my heart has fallen. I stared at her. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your hair, your eyes, your lips, your body that you haven't grown into, the way you walk, smile, laugh, the way your cheeks drop when you're mad or upset, the way you drag your feet when you're tired. Every single thing about you is beautiful. I stared at her. When I see you the world stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothign else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The world justs tops, and it is a beautiful place, and there is only you. Just you, and my eyes staring at you. I stared. When you're gone, the world starts again, and I don't like it as much. I can live in it, but I don't like it. I just walk around in ti amd wait to see you again and wait for it to stop again. I love it when it stops. It's the best thing I've ever known or ever felt, the best thing, and that, beautiful girl, is why I stare at you."

"She smiled brighter, wider, a smile more full of what she is, which is beautiful. Inside and out. The smile. Her. Beautiful."
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Austino_
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Being a recovering drunk myself, I found Frey's book to be thoroughly annoying. People in addiction tend to be self-absorbed people and this is one of the things we're trying to learn not to be when we stop drinking/using. Frey portrays a character who stops using but doesn't really change. He becomes more annoying and self-absorbed with his cliched eastern religious study and trip to the dentist without pain med's which I found totally unbelievable and unhealthy.
The good thing about the book was his portrayal of life for a substance abuser. What I really got out of it was how highly self-absorbed drunks and drug addicts are even when we write crappy books about it.
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