So bad, it's eminently quotable. I fondly remember lines like, "I endured, I endured, I fucking endured" and "a bayonet, an eight-foot bayonet, a fucking eight-foot bayonet" both during his traumatic root canal (poor Jimmy), and "Like a child being burned alive, a child being burned alive, a child being fucking burned alive," Frey's way of describing a grown man's screaming at the top of his lungs. See the pattern here? Forgive me if I misquote him by leaving out ellipses. No, I didn't demand a refund on my copy: I borrowed the book from a friend. You could say this is stunning prose in that it feels like an eight-foot bayonet being rammed through you, but then I've never been bayoneted, so I wouldn't know.

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.

James Frey- whether it's fictionalized or real- has written one hell of a book. The harrowing story of an addict and his fight to kick the drugs and re-build his life. Oprah may have ripped him to shreds, but it's a well-written book, genre specification or not.

A very depressing, graphic, detailed look inside a drug/alcohol rehab clinic. A true memoir tainted by controversy, even so it would be a good deterrent if impressionable teens were to read it. It’s pretty scary!

Since it was a day by day account of Jame’s time in treatment it became a bit boring. But.....his day at the dentist made my teeth ache and if he vomited one more time I was going to also!! I’m glad he’s stayed sober all these years and he would be a good lecturer on the middle school circuit.

I read it because I was bookless on a stormy Saturday afternoon and my neighborhood “Little Library” was a lot closer than my regular branch. Not my normal choice, but it was an eye opening read.

I read MLP in the spring of 2004 after it was recommended to me by an internship supervisor-turned-friend when I shared with her a story I wrote about a man addicted to cocaine, inspired by true life events. Her life had also been touched by addiction and when she learned that mine was, she lent me the book. I was pulled in by it, chewed up, and spit out with everything put back together differently. Together, we dissected it at length, comparing battle scars reopened by Frey's raw-edged prose. We were the only ones we knew who had read it, and we didn't dare recommend it to just anyone. It was too weighty, the subject material cut too deep. No, MLP was like a secret club, something to be shared prefaced with a disclaimer of "It's really intense, and kind of gory at parts, impossible to read at others, but you might like it ..."

Then, Oprah happened. Dear, sweet, well-meaning Oprah departed from her usual selections and took her book club down a more gnarled, jagged path. Before long, suburban housewives were gasping when Frey vomited for the twelfth time, themselves gagging on lunch when he got his root canal with only tennis balls to squeeze to control the pain until his nails shattered, discussing his every relapse over coffee, weeping when he found the redemption he had fought so hard against.

Then, The Smoking Gun happened. They broke open his story, exposing alleged embellishments and outright fabrications. They vilified him, putting him down in a fiery pit with the likes of Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair. The millions of sheep Oprah shepherded Frey's way responded in kind, guided by a new messiah with a new message: Frey was a dirty, rotten man who should be spit upon if you run into him on the street. And certainly don't waste your tears and pity on such a despicable individual.

They feel betrayed. They welcomed this man into their hearts, they prayed for him, and parts of him never existed. That's all this book is to them-- the tragic story of a reluctant an unlikely hero. A bit less palatable than, say, Macbeth, but the archetype is still the same.

The Smoking Gun does have some hard evidence, I'm not going to lie. I don't know Frey personally, I don't know anything about him beyond what he has written. However, it doesn't diminish how I feel about the book. There are those of us, like my friend and I, with whom the book resonated due to an association with addiction, can appreciate it for what it is, however true or fabricated it may be.

I'm still haunted by things I read in that book. I keep going back to the root canal scene. That's one of the parts of the book that's under suspicion. Whether it happened or not, it's still captivating. My own mother is in recovery with over a decade of sobriety. She has to be very careful with what medications they use, no matter how much pain they're in, or how detatched they'd like to be. She's been clean and sober for over a decade, yet there are choices she to make every day with regards to keeping that sobriety. No, it's not as intense as the root canal scene. Both, however, serve as examples of how that one drink after work can turn into 4 drinks and then passing out can turn into something that will direct the rest of your life.

The fact of the matter remains, the writing is solid and the story is compelling. Frey is no Janet Cooke and MLP is no Jimmy's World.

If you read the book and you got a glimmer of hope from it, whether it be about your own addiction or the demons a loved one has faced, then it's still a worthwhile read.

Leave out the Oprah fiasco for a moment, and think about the book on it's merits (however dubious they may be). Is it well written? Does it ring true (different to actual, factual legitimacy, I'm referring more to an air of authenticity that ALL good books have, fiction or non)? Are the characters realistic, living in situations that are not, say, the cliched, onanistic daydreams of a *cough* frustrated screenwriter? Is the protagonist, even in the tiniest way, a sympathetic character?

The answer is no. To all of the above. So WHY did people kiss his arse when it came out and treat him like he was some kind of not only recovery messiah, but LITERARY messiah as well? The fact that he made the lot up and Oprah slapped him on the wrist is secondary to me really. He's a terrible writer and his book sucks. I don't care if it's true or not.

I just can't describe what I felt after reading the book!! My emotions are missed up!!
Am going to write the rest of my review later on

There is a reason that this novel is my favorite novel. I read this at such a young age, and I am quite sure that I can blame it for the fact that I've never done drugs or drank in my 21 years of being alive. This book is so real and so detailed and specific and James' life is so horrible that it's nothing I would ever want for myself. I know there's a lot of controversy about whether this is a fiction or a non fiction book and I say: who cares? Whether he really lived it or exaggerated most of it, it's a good book. It's detailed and interesting and compelling and even as a fiction book nothing changes it. Maybe James Frey did not go through everything in this novel, but someone somewhere out there is and that makes the book non fiction.

Let me start by saying that the primary reason I decided to read this book now was that I got it for free. Not that I wasn't curious; I've got a definite weakness for angst and drugs and devastation and redemption. I mean, shit like this is ludicrously popular because it like twangs something in us, right? It accesses some kind of emotional core or whatever, some place in us that has struggled too, that wants to see suffering end and the sun shimmer out from behind the clouds and a reward come to those who have kicked and screamed and fought to earn it. Right? Anyway: so there, I admit it, I've always assumed I would probably read this book eventually, and would probably even like it.

Before I get any further, though, I'd like to do a bit of ranting about the whole sordid, shitty scandal. First of all: jesus fuck, how stupid was all that?? I was working at Random House when it was going down; I remember that any of us who wanted to could go to the conference rooms where they were showing the Oprah episode where Nan Talese went on the show so the two of them could get all indignant and talk about how James Frey betrayed them and the American people and bunnies and apple pie. I stayed at my desk, because it was too stupid to possibly think about. It's a memoir, people, and memoirs are fucking subjective. Furthermore, it's a memoir of the first few weeks of convalescence after ten years of nightly blackouts due to extreme consumption of insane amounts of drugs and alcohol. Is it really that surprising that Frey forgot or fucked up some details? And even furthermore, it's a story, it's a book, people, and Frey had the sense to be a writer, to lay a narrative arc over things, to make beginning-middle-end sections, to insert snappy dialogue where it was probably a lot less snappy, to make people maybe just a little bit smarter and more interesting than maybe they really were. This is not wrong. The reason why books aren't explicitly true to life is because life is boring sometimes, and when you write a book or a movie or a comedy act, you can gloss over the inconsequential things and capitalize on the interesting bits.

It was ludicrous how Random House fell all over themselves to work both sides of the issue ("You guys think he's still relevant and important? Oh, then we of course stand by our authors. But wait, you guys over there think he's a fuckup and a liar? Well we were lied to too! Poor us! Please don't stop buying our books!"). Puke and puke. I also have a lot of anger about Oprah (much of which well-meaning friends have tried to get me to get over, but no fucking thank you), and I think she too was just exclusively concerned with protecting her brand and her market share, and that everybody scapegoated Frey in an unforgivable way. But then, of course, there's this: scandals sell some fucking books. Sure, Frey was humiliated on TV and throughout the media, but that motherfucker also made a shit-ton of money. Random House and Oprah kind of had to play both sides of the issue, because both sides were going to buy, buy, buy. Remember that other Oprah mini-scandal with Jonathan Franzen, how she put him on her book club and he said no thanks? Well, let me be clear: the only Oprah books I've ever read, and probably ever will read, are Franzen's and Frey's. Oprah is so powerful that even the people who hate her make her money and are probably good for her overall. That's fucking scary.

Anyway, enough of that; on to the book itself. Will anyone be surprised by this point to hear that I didn't hate it? Well, I didn't. In fact, I liked it a good deal. There were passages where I was pretty damn riveted, honestly, when I couldn't wait until my next cigarette break so I could read some more. Like I said, it's tough to beat the kind of suffering and struggle and survival that's on display here. I've had friends in NA and AA, and many more who maybe should have been; I'm a good audience for this kind of thing. Moreover, though (smoking aside) I've never been an addict myself, I quietly agree with a lot of Frey's ideas (as presented here, that is) about the futility of the Twelve Steps, and how especially the "higher power" bit, along with things like "genetically predisposed" and "childhood abuse" and such like, could be looked at as just tidy ways of disavowing responsibility for one's own mistakes. I mean, for fuck's sake, I smoke a lot of cigarettes, and though yes, I do think I have a bit of an addictive personality, and sure, maybe because my parents didn't take away my bottle early enough I have an oral fixation, and yup, many of my relatives were heavy smokers, but still: every single time I light a cigarette, I am making a decision to do so. Every. Single. Time. I could very certainly not do it, and the times I've quit I've done just that. I am of course in no way saying that heroin is easy to kick, or that physical addiction is as simple to overcome as not striking that match. I am saying, though, that I agree with a lot of the things Frey says here. That's all.

And look: there's no doubt that Frey has crafted himself (or: his "self") into a serious bad-boy hero in this book. I'm sure that he is not nearly as smart and clever and recalcitrant and charismatic and nails-tough as he paints himself to be herein. But see above, okay? It's a fucking memoir. Does anyone for one second believe that any memoirist can remember conversations, word for word, from years ago? Of course not. You remember the general idea, maybe a phrase here or there, and you recreate. Recreate. A memoir is a creative process just like fiction is. Sure, there were times during this book when I rolled my eyes and thought "well isn't that tidy," or "I'm really sure he said that," but that's fine. I am a thinking human being, and I am going to bring my own thoughts and feelings and opinions to what I read, and I am going to dole out my respect and judgement accordingly.

The bottom line, for me, goes back to something I always say about memoirs. One of the quotes on my favorite memoir ever, n  Another Bullshit Night in Suck Cityn, says something like "finally, a person whose life is deserving of a memoir has the skills to write one." Whether Frey really had a double root canal with no anesthetic, whether he commanded the adulation and respect of grizzled mobsters in rehab, whether he puked for ten days straight and cursed out all the therapists and is a perfect fighter and is actually afraid of nothing — that is all irrelevant, or at least secondary. What matters is that Frey has not only gone through some major major shit and lived to tell about it, he is capable of telling about it in a way that is generally compelling and often fascinating. Sure, he made a lot of really weird style choices (like random capitalizations and no indented paragraphs), which I found stupid and distracting. Sure, his story is often overdramatized and too pat. Sure, he paints himself as a pitch-perfect brilliant bad-boy-rebel anti-hero. But fuck. This is still a pretty great book, and I'm really glad I read it.

This is one of the most engaging books I have ever read. With every page, you are lead along a ride with a recovering drug addict. Throughout the book, you find yourself wishing for his success. The book starts with James, the protagonist. He is on a plane, and he does not know how he got there. He is very injured; missing four teeth and having a broken nose. He eventually finds out he was put on the plane by two men and a doctor, and that he is flying to Chicago. Arriving, he is placed in a Rehab clinic by his family members. Initially, he is not very fond of the idea. He constantly denies to take part in the "Twelve Step Program", which guarantees success in the Rehab clinic. He finds himself throwing up all the time. The only solitude he finds in the clinic is Lily, who he constantly is struck by her beauty. On numerous occasions, he tries to look himself in the eyes, but fails. It isn't until the start of the Family Program that you start to notice changes in his behavior. He finally succeeds in looking himself in the eyes, which he notices to be "pale green". After seeing the "Bald Man" cry, James realizes that he must get sober. A Million Little Pieces sheds light on the abusive life of an addict and their road to recovery. The book is filled with self-pity and deep regret. It is seemingly impossible to put down the book, because your compelled to find out his ultimate fate. The perspective of a drug addict is apparent in every page, and through James we are able to see the inner battles and suicidal thoughts faced by addicts throughout the world.

بعد از کلی پیشنهاد بالاخره خوندمش. اونقدرها هم که ازش تعریف میکردن جذبم نکرد. البته داستان بدی نیست و پر از نکات خوبه. داستان سریع پیش میره و با اینکه بخش های زیادیش فقط از دیالوگ تشکیل شده، روند خطیش آزاد دهنده و کسل کننده نیست و خسته نمیکنه. جالبیش این بود که داستان در واقع گذشته ی خود نویسنده س، و باید بگم که داستان تلخیه. بعضی قسمت هاش اونقدراذیت کننده س که واقعا ترسناک میشه یجورایی. داستان راجع به کنترل خود و همچنین از دست دادن کنترل هست. و در انتها بالاخره به نتیجه میرسه که باید بهتر شد، ادامه داد و زندگی کرد. داستان در کل خیلی هم تاریک نیست. از نکته های خوب دیگه ش، ارجاع های فلسفی خوبیه که داره.

I recently finished the roller-coaster ride that is James Frey's (mostly) autobiographical novel A Million Little Pieces. Surely many of you have seen the controversy over this book which has left Oprah "very disappointed" in author James Frey. She feels taken advantage of by the fact that he seems to have fictionalized several incidents in the book. It is unfortunate that Frey lied (his book would have been just as good with strictly the truth), and I am not condoning lying (am I?), but let's hear Heather's take on it.

This is an astoundingly riveting book which I picked up in an airport bookstore in spite of the Oprah's Book Club sticker on the front. Raw and affecting, Frey's memoir reveals the "self-inflicted apocalypse" that is hard-core drug addiction. It offers unflinching insight into the loathing and despair that comes with it, and the very long, very hard road back from it.

The book opens with Frey waking up on an airplane at age 23 after ten-plus years of intense, regular, hard drug use. "I wake to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My front four teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut." Frey has no idea where he is or how he got there. When he lands in Chicago, he is met by his parents who take him to a rehab facility. It's either that or he will end up dying from the copious drug use which has almost exhausted his system; mind-staggering amounts of alcohol ("every day, when I wake up, as much as I can"), cocaine ("every day, as much as I can, lately crack, but in every form that exists"), pills, acid, mushrooms, meth, PCP, glue. When he takes these things, it temporarily quiets what he calls "The Fury," the murderous, screaming fury inside of him.

As Frey works through all the crap in his life and tries to salvage his relationships, who he is, and come to terms with what he has done, his writing reverberates and aches with pain and honest intensity, but I appreciate that he doesn't slide into maudlin prose. It is terse. It is to the point. He is dealing with The Question posed to him on the rehab self-assessment quiz:

"My sins are unpardonable. True or false?
I stare at the question.
My sins are unpardonable.
I stare at the question.
My sins are unpardonable.

I leave it blank."

I thought that the merits of this book outweigh the fact that there are fictionalized incidents. To me, it's like that whole period in his life was so out of control, so destructive, blurred, surreal, so....falling apart, that the point remains even if the details were not exactly as they occurred. The essence of the book, for me, remains the same in light of the current revelations. It's not as if I went and sobbed in a hot shower, curled in a ball, when I heard that not *every* incident in the book happened exactly like he said. It is a still a recommended read on my shelf.