Don't be suckered in by Oprah's fanaticism. It is a woven narrative of memory and dream from a twisted, warped drug user and alcoholic. Of course it is full of inverted realities and embellished versions of history. Its a wonder his brain can even form sentences. The fact that he not only can, but can convince the world with vivid, enchanting prose makes me believe in his ability as a writer.

Show me a writer and I will show you a liar.
Two sides to the same coin.
Anyone who disagrees with me is not a writer or is not a good liar.

Going into James Frey's A Million Little Pieces I thought I'd be prepared - I remember what happened with him on Oprah and all that. By reading it now rather than back then I wasn't bothered so much by the fact that this "memoir" is fictionalized. Knowing about the fact that details and major parts were "embellished" didn't bother me. Though I was really irritated while reading the entire book - to be honest I skimmed it - and some of that has to do with the situations the "author" has gotten himself into in general. A good chunk of it though comes from the style. I mean, I like the idea of stream of consciousness inside the head of an addict, but I didn't actually like how it turned out. There's a lot of repetition, random capitalization of nouns, few chapter or section breaks, and there are no quotation marks. It's kind of difficult to follow, especially if you're just trying to keep track of who is supposed to be speaking and when. Overall, I'm glad I didn't read this a decade ago or I would have been really upset!

In his much-debated book, Frey offers the reader a significant glimpse into his life as an addict and the time he spent in a treatment centre addressing these demons. Opening in dramatic fashion, the reader is immediately treated to Frey circling the drain as he lands in Chicago and is shipped off to an unnamed facility in Minnesota. His arrival garners much confusion and pushback, as Frey expresses feeling that he did not belong or fit in amongst others who are at various stages of addiction. The reader discovers, through Frey's own narrative, how withdrawn he feels about the process and how, while being frank about the depths to which his addiction overtook his life, he does not feel that a counselling and Twelve Step approach will reunite the million pieces into which his life has shattered over the thirteen years since addiction formally reared its ugly head. Bridging acquaintances with numerous others at the facility, Frey is able to compare his life against those of others who have also had to battle addiction. With first-hand accounts of withdrawal symptoms, despair, and refusing to engage in therapeutic intervention, Frey seems well on his way to burning the money spent on his time in treatment. It is only when his parents arrive for Family Counselling, an intense program whereby the addict and those closest to him tear off all the scabs related to the addiction, that Frey begins to synthesise the pain and devastation that his life has become. The reader is able to see the insights that Frey offers, as well as the reactions of his parents, coupled with a better understanding of the addiction's nexus. These insightful sections begin the first steps in the long road to recovery and Frey's ability to find some semblance of order in his shattered life. However, a fellow addict, Lilly, plays a key role in his life at this point in time and their connection proves an addiction in and of itself, as well as contravening the Cardinal Rule of the facility. A wonderful story that pulls no punches about the horrendous nature of addiction, the struggles an addict faces in coming to the realisation of their powerlessness, and the crux of the recovery process. Told in as raw a format as many readers will have encountered, Frey presents the reader with much food for thought as they explore this poignant narrative.

While much has been made of the validity of the text, those who choose to sit on their pedestals and lob blame or scorn do nothing for the message found within its pages. Frey tells an extremely naked story about the addict and the struggle to climb out of the hole in which they dig themselves. Be it drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, or other vices, Frey's narrative can touch the heart of the attentive and non-judgmental reader. As Frey says in his own words, “There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession.” As soon as the reader can come to terms with this and sees the message at the root of the story, that of the horrors of addiction, there is a chance to synthesise all that is told in this story. Passing judgment or trying to vilify the author because of factual irregularities serves only to demonstrate how said critic misses the point of this book and lacks of ability to comprehend the deeper message. Addiction is horrid, it is a struggle each and every day. We can sit in our ivory towers and bemoan those who drink or smoke crack, but that will not solve the problem, it only seeks to push it under the rug. While the early chapters were hard for me to digest, not only for their content but also the jagged nature of the writing style, I grew to accept that Frey sought to present the reader with the perspective of the addict, as though it were a written at the time of the events. Choppy, repetitive, and even nonsensical at times, Frey portrays the struggles that the addict must face while also presenting a lifestyle that, for some readers, is entirely foreign. Add to that, the text is free from any quotation marks, allowing him to recollect things as he did, rather than shackling himself into anything binding. Frey tries to shine light on it and offer a degree of compassion for those who struggle by personalising the suffering. For that, he is owed a debt of gratitude.

Thank you, Rae Eddy, for opening my eyes to this book and to the inner struggles with which I could relate on many levels. You have touched my life in ways that I cannot clearly elucidate, but I think you know precisely what I mean, even without the written word.

Kudos, Mr. Frey for putting forth this frank account of the struggles an addict faces. Some may be too wrapped up in their own soap box speeches as they dole out praise and the public rushes to guzzle their 'Kool-Aid'. You steer clear of this and the drama of talk-show blather.

Like/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

I remember reading this eons ago when it came out on a recommendation from a friend. Didn't like it. I couldn't empathize with the point of view at all. Then Oprah came out and told him off for fabricating the entire story. Wasn't surprised at all.

Nope not happy that he started Full Fathom Five

I'm still not quite sure what to think of this book, even with the revelations that chunks of it were totally made up. To me, that's not its main problem. Frey's entire work is hamstrung by a half-baked stream of consciousness style that is more often annoying than compelling. Sure, I can appreciate the style when he's talking about how messed up in the head he is, but the inexplicable punctuation (he seems to capitalize words randomly) and the total avoidance of quotation marks doesn't make it artsy or authentic. It just makes it hard to read.

The book is also hopelessly melodramatic and romantic in the classical sense of the word. True love at first sight saves the day, the author befriends a mob boss with a heart of gold, and there are more addict sob stories than you can swing a crack pipe at. Really, anybody who thought that this "memoir" was 100% true needs to go into gullibility detox themselves. Stuff just doesn't line up like this in real life. Other "Oh you don't really expect me to believe this" points include:

* Getting on a plane covered in blood, in need of immediate medical attention, and unconscious. I can't even get on a plane with an oversized bag.
* Being told he can't have Novocaine (a non-addictive, local, and non-mood altering anesthetic) for a double root canal because he's an addict.
* The author's not getting thrown out of a substance abuse clinic when he freaks out and trashes a room.
* Being told that the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory pegged the author's intelligence as high (the MMPI doesn't measure intelligence).
* A dramatic rescue of a fellow patient from a crack house, accompanied by clinic staff.
* One patient's getting the clinic to allow him to have a private party, complete with catered food, gambling, and the setup of a satellite TV system for the viewing of a Pay-Per-View boxing event.

I could go on, but you get the point. So the book is poorly written, melodramatic, and contrived in several places, not to mention that big parts of it are billed as real when they are obviously not. But still, I kept turning the pages until I came to the end, because it's an interesting story and I wanted to know how it came out. Frey also has some thought-provoking things to say about the nature of abuse and how he was able to deal with it --take personal responsibility for not only your problems, but for solving them. He eschews --even mocks-- the whole 12-step program, calling it the replacement of one addition (drugs) with another (the program). While I think one addiction is obviously better than the other in this example, i can kind of see what he's talking about.

But again, since the legitimacy of his whole tale is questionable, I'm not sure I'd recommend looking to him for anything more than an entertaining story.

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.

I really wish I'd gotten my shit together to review this before all of the news about how much of it might be fiction started swirling around. But since I didn't, I feel some responsibility to talk about that, as well as about the book itself. Oh well.

The drama, in case you live under a rock, is that the truth of a number of the claims Frey makes in this book, a memoir, is being contested. You can take a look at this article if you'd like more information. My thoughts are that Frey probably did exaggerate or simply make up some of the things he writes in A Million Little Pieces. Mostly, though, I don't care. My not caring is twofold. First, this is a great book, and it would be a great book if it were fiction, so why should it matter how much of it actually happened? Secondly, I think it's naive to expect a memoir to be 100% factual (if 100% factual even exists). People write with an agenda, people even remember with an agenda, and that's always going to come across, to some extent. That being said, if it's true that Frey exaggerated or invented a lot of what is in this book, then a disclaimer to that effect should have been printed at the front of the book. Tim O'Brien, one of my favorite writers of all time, wrote several partially-factual/partially-fiction works dealing with Vietnam. His response to critics of his not being 100% accurate was that he was writing the truth about what being there felt like, about what being there was, and sometimes the actual facts fit into that and sometimes they don't. I can accept that, and I even admire the perspective. But it's not fair to the reader not to lay it out at the beginning if that is what you are doing. O'Brien does lay it out, and Frey probably should have.

That all being said, I thought this was a very high quality book. The plot is, in many ways, predictable. Frey is a young, well-off, white alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal. The book is the story of his six-week "last chance" rehab, during which time he comes off his addictions and begins his path of sobriety. Nothing revolutionary there. However, Frey's writing is top notch, which makes the story interesting to read, and his take on addiction and recovery is much less that you find in most people who write about it and much more like that I've found in the real life addicts I know. Frey has little respect for AA or 12 stepping in general, and he insists throughout the book on taking responsibility for his own actions and for his addictions. He even finds fault with the untouchable tenant that addiction is a disease. To me, at least, these things are interesting. And whether Frey the human being ever really held them or to what extent matters very little to me. What I'm interested in is what Frey the writer has to say about them.

I like this book because it was interesting to read, it didn't remind me of every other addiction book I've ever read, and it made me think. None of those things require a single word of it to have been true. So I recommend you read it. However, if there is a sharp and important delineation in your mind between fiction and memoir, you'd probably better read this one as fiction.

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.

Glad that's over.
Very macho, right down to most of it being bullshit, but entertaining enough in places, especially early on, nevertheless. Kind of ridiculous, too, though - the dentist scene is hilarious. Childish, somehow, despite all the posturing and posing.

One of the best books I've ever read. Forget what Oprah said about the guy, she's just covering her own rich butt. Offers a wonderful perspective on those battling their own addiction, whatever that may be. (We all have at least one.) Who really cares if every non-important detail isn't true. The general message of the book is not to be missed. I had a hard time putting it down.

addicts exaggerate the truth -- who knew???
first off, it's a great read with a unique style. frey makes a sort of rhythm with his sentence structure throughout the entire story, pulling and pushing the reader along at a pace that he (frey) determines, and that is an amazing accomplishment in itself. it is also a wonderful tool for bringing the reader into a world that he/she may have absolutely no idea about. i've been to rehab -- a few, actually, over the course of a year -- and it is very much like going on a roller coaster without a seat belt when you are least prepared physically/mentally for even the slow car ride there.
secondly, it would blow a lot of minds to do some research on how ineffective AA really is. for many, AA will actually make matters worse. i'm not anti-12-step programs, ((if it works, great!)) but there are a lot of other options that people are not made aware of that could save a life or two.
third, with regards to the climactic scene where frey confronts the demon-whiskey, whether it actually happened or not is pretty irrelevant; he paints a great picture of how a person feels once he/she is on the other side of the problem/disorder/disease/whatever. looking at a manifestation of the very thing that caused so much damage and pain... the frustration of realizing that it could do it again if one were to let down one's guard for even a second... even the somewhat sick and egotistical pleasure one gets from taunting the old bully that used to beat you up daily and take your lunch money... powerful and poignant.
what amazes me more than anything, believe it or not, is frey's honesty. he doesn't do what so many addiction memoirs do, which is romanticise a very self-degrading affliction. he gives it enough of a "hook" here and there to keep the reader's attention, and he drifts in and out of the plot's reality and his subconscious, ((which is also very true to the actual experience,)) but ultimately, he gives a very genuine account of something that (thank God) most people will never have to go through.
and when it comes to the scene at the dentist, well, it wouldn't shock me one way or the other concerning his "truthiness." what i will say is that i can't out right dismiss the possibility when it comes to a man who has the courage to put such a personal and difficult experience out there for the entire world. you can question the man's honesty, but not the size of his b*lls.

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..