You may be thinking you'd like to read this book to see what all the fuss is about. Don't. First of all, even putting the "scandal" aside (and I'm sorry, but if you read this book and didn't know that 90 percent of it or more was absolute bullshit, you really need to do some work on your critical thinking skills), the writing style is embarrassing -- an overwrought, pseudo-macho mess. Second, if you buy this book, you're just inflating Frey's bank account, which is tantamount to rewarding this asshole for appalling behavior. If you want a story about addiction, read Ellen Harris's Like Being Killed instead.

This is the only book to date that I have ever deliberately destroyed after reading -- put it through the shredder at work.

Io non pensavo che un tossicodipendente alcolista potesse sopravvivere a quello a cui è sopravvissuto James Frey e che racconta in questo memoir.
Seriamente, è qualcosa che si tiene costantemente sul limite massimo della resistenza umana, ed è raccontato con un'onestà disarmante.
Se l'inizio - James che si ritrova su un aereo, senza denti, sanguinante e con un buco nella guancia - vi sembra estremo, aspettate di leggere il resto.
Bello bello.

This is the only book I actually threw across the room when I was done. I wanted my time back.

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.

It was no surprise when it came out he fictionalized parts-except maybe that Oprah believed him.

I read this before the exaggeration debacle hit. I was amazed by the writing style -- it reminded me of the fast-pace and sparse punctuation of Kerouac's On The Road. I'm not sure how "Million Little Pieces" would read now, knowing how many half-truths are involved.

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".

I did go into this book after the whole scandel business went down, and I went in not caring if it wasn't quite as factual as some may thinkg. Going in knowing this, I had a fairly open mind thinking of it more as a "based on a true story" kind of memoir (hey if I was writing about rehab I would probably change a few things too). However, even going in with this mind set I was SO irritated that this piece of crap had ever been sold as non-fiction. And no, it wasn't the fact that most of the book was clearly made up, but a number of other things.
First off, there were far too many fancy "only in the fiction world" events. If a crack head runs away from rehab, the guy that doesn't like him isn't going to come and help him on his mission. If a crackhead breaks the number one rule of the rehab centre they aren't going to give him a second chance just because he is so incredible.
Now, that being said, the second thing that irked me was how Frey tried to make himself into a hero. At no point in this book do I congratulate Frey for overcoming his addictions. I just don't care because I don't know what's true and what isn't. Frey explains to us over and over and over again how he is apparently the only person who has ever walked on the planet that can overcome addiction without the twelve steps. All of his support says in this book, "It won't work James, no one has ever stopped being an addict without the twelve steps." Well, James the miracle can! He can stop this just with the power of his mind. He is also strong enough to go into a crackhouse while in rehab and not do any crack and as he's leaving rehab he can sit infront of a huge class of whiskey and not drink it. Well! Good job James! You are the most incredible person on earth (that's what he wants us to say isn't it?)
Third, I hate the bit at the end of the book that "explains" what happens to all of the other characters. You expect every single event. It's like the "You get what's coming" ending. It was lame.
Finally, I hate hate hate this Writing style. Little picky things, I know, but I found it made this book very hard to read. Repeats of everything. Random words capitalized in the middle of a sentence. It irritated me to no end, in fact I could barely finish this book.
I want to forget forget forget this book.

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.

It's a 1/2 star only. Good Lord, what a cringey whinefest. I have a policy of reading through whatever it is that I start. But I gave up after 229 pages of incessant annoyance. Here is a sample of the remarkable writing this book is filled with -

Everything goes white and I cannot breathe. I clench my eyes and bite down on my existing teeth and I think my jaw may be breaking and I squeeze my hands and I dig my fingers through the hard rubber surface of the tennis balls and my fingernails crack and my fingernails break and my fingernails start to bleed and I curl my toes and they fucking hurt and my torso tightens and my stomach muscles feel as if they're going to collapse and my ribs feel as if they're caving in on themselves and it fucking hurts and my balls are shrinking and the shrinking fucking hurts and my dick is hard because my blood hurts and my blood wants to escape and is seeking exit through my dick and my dick fucking hurts and my arms are straining against the thick blue nylon straps and the thick blue nylon straps are cutting my flesh and it fucking hurts and my face is on fire and the veins in my neck want to explode and my brain is white and it is melting and it fucking hurts.

Do you know what is being descibed here? A frikkin ROOT CANAL. At a dentist's.

Alcohol and drug abuse is a serious topic and I give the author props to be able to write about it but unfortunately, it reads less as an insightful memoir and more as an immature, angsty, incoherent rant against anything and everything. Add to this the fact that he has fabricated incidents in order to add drama to it and you have a perplexing fictional memoir that makes you doubt its credibility. The style of writing is a terrible, terrible TERRIBLE attempt at mixing dialogues with stream of consciousness thoughts.

If I can sum it up, in the style of the book itself, I shall do it in the following manner :

The book is shit and I'm reading it. It is painful but I'm reading it. I can't go on but I'm reading it. *Insert cuss words*. It hurts my brain but I'm reading it. My IQ drops but I'm reading it. *Cuss again* And then, I fling it away. And it doesn't hurt as much. And I'm not reading it anymore.

Use A Million Little Pieces of your time constructively and go read something else.
Lovely front cover though. Very pretty.

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.

I haven’t read memoirs before, but I’m so glad I did. I loved the style this was written, as if he was in front of you speaking or in his head. I went through many feelings; from disgust to severe empathy. There was much more drama and stories than I expected from being his story in rehab. It was completely raw and you see the character development happening. It makes you thankful if you have not gone through as much as him, or inspired that you can do the same. Or a mixture of the two. You also get some closure on some of the individuals at the end of the book which was unexpected, but I totally appreciated.