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.

Reviewed by Taylor Rector for TeensReadToo.com

This is a terrifying novel about drug and alcohol addiction and rehabilitation. Anyone who has been or is in rehab for anything should be required to read this book. Anyone who has family members in rehab should read this book. Basically, everyone over the age of 14 should have to read this book.

It depicts the horrible tragedy of addiction and how Mr. Frey overcomes it. He knows that he has an addiction problem when he wakes up on a plane not knowing how he got there, where the plane is going, or how he got a broken nose and a hole through his cheek. When the plane lands, he gets off the plane and has his parents drive him to rehab, where he receives detoxification and learns how to control his drinking and drug addictions.

The book is his journey through rehab and how be becomes a better person. There is a lot of vulgarity and things that seem inappropriate but are a must for the story. The language is probably how everyone talked and the extreme drug situations are really what he went through.

There has been a lot of controversy over this book because there are parts that are "embellished" and altered. If you can see though all of that, then this book is truly amazing. I wouldn't suggest reading this book if you are under the age of fourteen due the language and theme of the book. You also might not want to read A MILLION LITTLE PIECES if you have a faint heart or easily get sick to your stomach because there are some extremely graphic scenes in the book. This is one I highly recommend, though.

I deliberately read this memoir of non-fiction fiction to explore the relationship between truth, Truth, and story. But I didn't learn all that much about my relationship with those things as much as I did find out about other people's entaglements with those issues.

For example, I took this book with me to update my voter registration. Granted, it is a small city, so it was just me in the small office with the registrar, but I don't think being alone was the only reason she looked at what I was holding and felt compelled to say, "You know that's all lies, don't you?" Her voice and tone was more PSA sounding than that. I told her, yes, that that was precisely why I was reading it, and that maybe sometimes lies have more truth than the Truth. Perhaps her voice was one of a disgusted reader who felt cheated by Frey, I don't know. I should have found out, in the interests of my exploration...for science. But I responded only to the first question without asking another and then lickety-split left that place because she didn't look at all happy with my response (after all, I'm new to this neighborhood and she has my address and knows where I'll be coloring in circles on election day).

When my friend called and asked, "What are you reading now (book nerd)?" (- implied)
and heard "A Million Little Pieces" , she too had to tell me that the book was a lie. Everyone who had anything to say about the book I was reading said the same thing, and I think they said it for the same reason- as a warning. But even if they didn't say it as a warning, it was what I heard-Watch out! This book might not be what you think it is...this James Frey is telling a story in his story...you know, just be careful. And that is what this whole thing is about...is what you hear a truthful interpretation of what is said? Is what you read a truthful interpretation of what is written? Just how much 'story' is allowed in a story?

Thankfully, David Sedaris had an interview in the Spring '07 Missouri Review that mentioned this very thing in regards to this very book. (Mr. Sedaris, I love you. And that is true, but you can interpret it however you want)

(Sedaris:)"Was it Flannery O'Connor who said that a writer's job is not to have an experience but to contemplate experiences? That seems right to me-trying to make sense of it all."
(Interviewer:)"Earlier, we were talking about writing fiction and nonfiction. What do you feel are the most important differences between those two genres?"
(Sedaris:)"...Okay, James Frey wrote a book saying, 'I'm a fucked-up alcoholic.' And then people read the book, and now they're saying, 'That drunk lied to us!' Well, he kind of warned you in advance that he was a fucked-up alcoholic. I can't understand the self-righteousness that goes along with that anger. You can let the truth slide when it comes to the president, but if it's a first-time memoirist, how dare he? How dare he lead us on?
I loved Angela's Ashes, but if I found out tomorrow that Frank McCourt was born in Dublin instead of Limerick and that his family was wealthy, it wouldn't change my feelings about the book at all. I think autobiography is the last place you would look for truth. Biography, maybe, but not autobiography. Ever since that business with him [James Frey], fact-checkers are in overdrive. It's made my life miserable. Like, the fact-checker from The New Yorker will say, 'We talked to your father, and he said that the grandfather clock is made out of oak, and you say it was made out of cherry.' And it's not a story about a grandfather clock. It doesn't really matter. "

Me ha dejado el cuerpo medio del revés. Una novela brutal. Resumen muy resumido: el paso del autor, alcohólico y drogadicto prácticamente desde los diez años que, ya con 23, entra un centro de rehabilitación de Minessota después de haberse degradado hasta los máximos. Aborda el paso por el centro con sus historias, con sus rutinas, con sus dramas y sus luchas.

La novela tiene algo muy bueno: la permeabilidad. Entras en ella como al agua templada, sin problemas, pese a que leas otras tantas novelas a la vez, como es mi caso. El no-estilo del autor en la redacción te lo permite. Puntualizo: he leído novelas que ensalzan el no-estilo casi a niveles imposibles, de esas en las que el autor pone puntos y comas y espacios más o menos donde a él le sale, supongo para dar dramatismo o recalcar algo, y tú tienes que hacer un esfuerzo por entenderlo y encajarte. Pues no es el caso, es justo al revés: el tío controla el contenido de la historia, la lengua, y la narración, y su novela es permeable al punto de que te mete en ella y por ahí circulas sin problemas aunque no ponga un mísero guión por ningún lado y lleves dos días sin cogerla. Como él mismo dice: desnuda tu alma, escribe sin pensar en nada más que lo que te sale.

A ver, también es verdad que en la novela se pasa su tiempo contando que va y viene, lo que desayuna, lo que hace, con quién habla y con quién no etc; vamos, la vida en un centro de estos, pero entre medio vas conociendo su historia y la de otros internos, que no tienen desperdicio alguno, y no soy yo de relatos ni de pasajes por las nubes.

Esta novela fue criticada por venderse como memorias cuando incluía parte de ficción (el propio autor, en una novela posterior, Katerina, dice que se arrepiente de haberlo hecho. Que era su primera novela y que le recomendaron hacerlo así desde la editorial para darle más empaque). Y yo creo que es en el relato de su relación con los demás internos donde le pillaron, porque ni Tarantino los tiene tan buenos. Los personajes son cojonudos, pero más allá de su potencia como personajes, en mi opinión tiene más valor la camaradería, los sentimientos que surgen entre ellos aumentados por las situación tan límite en la que se encuentran todos ellos y se nota que lo
que narra el autor es completamente real y sentido por èl.

Y la historia tiene giros, los tiene, pero no son el motor de la novela aunque te retuercen a niveles insospechados. También le dan oxigeno. Te dejan tocado.

Es una novela intensísima, fuerte, buena, potente pese a sus muchas hojas de puro pasaje, en las que solo vives con él tratando de detener lo que él llama “la furia” mientras vive día a día una rutina sana rodeado de gente, incluido él mismo, llena de demonios y deseando autodestruirse acosados por su pasado y la adicción.

Muy recomendable.

I just love you, James!

If I could rate this is zero I would. This was one of the most horrible books I've ever wasted time on. I told people around me how fake this book was before thr truth ever came out. Absolutely crazy that this book is still going so strong. Frey should be ashamed of himself for trying to play this off as a memoir when it is in fact fiction. Even if he did claim it as it was it still a horribely written book. STAY AWAY!!

The only reason that I finished this book was that I brought it with me from London and I was going around small coastal towns in the Dominican Republic offering no alternative reading material. But what a waste of 500+ pages of reading time! I cannot think of anything that Frey wants to say in this book other than: Look at how fucked-up I am. I'm not asking for your sympathy or understanding - and fuck you if you even think of pitying me. Nor am I writing to help others with similar addiction problems. As a matter of fact, I hurt those who try to help me and ridicule the methods that are used in the rehab clinics. I just want you to look at how fucked-up I am and revel in that because I'm a narcissistic asshole and I just love to talk about myself. I will lie all through the book to make myself look tough and bad-ass, and after my lies are exposed I will try to justify them by saying that I wanted my story to have ebb and flow. I will attempt to manipulate your emotions into thinking that I'm not an asshole all the time. There was this poor fucked-up crack whore in my rehab who fell for me. I will make more cheese out of that story than Wisconsin produces in a year. Of course, I have more reasons to write this book than just telling you how fucked-up I am. Buy it and make me rich. That would be nice, wouldn't it?

Large parts of this book is unbelievably mundane and boring; some are downright asinine. The only reason that this book has blown up to more than 500 pages is that Frey just loves to talk about himself. There's a story in the book about some ex-patient rock star who comes to the clinic to talk about his experience and recovery. Frey ridicules his speech as all lies and self-aggrandizing bullshit. His own book can be described in the exact same way, and I have a feeling that he knows it very well. Frey probably thinks that he's come up with some really avant-garde experimental writing style by capitalizing random nouns and I-speak-he-speaks dialogs, but his writing is mediocre and irritating. It becomes good on rare occasions, like the passage describing his root-canal procedure without anesthesia (another lie, by the way), but on other occasions he relapses to the other extreme and writes like a barely-literate juvenile.

I don't care about this guy and I don't care about his story. The book left me feeling angry at myself for giving some self-indulgent asshole the satisfaction of having another reader. I'm really happy that I borrowed the book from the library and didn't give him some of my money as well.

It gets 4 stars because the farking font and free association paragraph style KILLED me (otherwise, it's probably 4.25). I never read this when Oprah told me to and I still didn't read it when she told me not to. I picked it up now because it popped up on about 10 different "Kelly, stop avoiding it and just read this YOU IDIOT" lists and I'm glad I did. It was graphic, dark and so absolutely grotesque that I had to put it down a couple of times, but man was it good. If asked my opinion, I believe Frey's story is about 75% pure bullshit. That's alright by me, though. It's still a good read.

I read "A Million Little Pieces" before the entire scandal broke out surrounding the truthfulness of the "memoir". Even before obtaining the knowledge that the book was not 100% truthful, I found it to be an overdramatized and unrealistic account of what real life drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs are like. In many scenes in the book I felt as though Frey was self aggrandizing and in some parts even glorifying the experience of being a drug addict. He portrayed drug addicts as rough and rugged, people that have been around the block more than once. Although there is definitely some truth to this, the other side of it is that Rehab is an incredibly sad place to visit. It is filled with lost souls who due to their brain chemistry, life experiences and poor luck have no other choice or options but to admit themselves (People rarely volunteer rehab, it usually takes a severe "rock bottom" to get them there.) I feel as though Frey's book would have been a lot more powerful had he excluded the sensationalism that seemed to flood the book, much of this represented in his wriitng style (one word sentences for dramatic effect.)
After the scandal was revealed and Frey's book was found to be less than non-fiction, my immediate reaction was sadness. I view this to mean that Frey has truly not recovered from his addiction, as step four in the 12 -step- program for recovering addicts is to have "made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." This book is a reflection that Frey obviously still has some work to do. (Not that all of us don't..we just didn't write a book.) To end on a positive note, I will say that "A Million Little Pieces" did give some people a push to seek treatment for their addictions and anything that is able to motivate someone is valuable, no matter the reason behind it.

New thoughts: I have been alerted by another good-reader that Frey refused to follow the 12 steps while he was in rehab (I remember this now..it has been a while since I read the book.) If the memoir was a true story, I would send an emphatic bravo over to Frey and encourage him to design his own program.. However this is not the case and I can only view this as Frey's false promise to other addicts that something other than A.A and the 12 step program will "cure" them of their demons. Sadly, thus far, for the majority of people, the 12 step program is the only successful way to long term recovery and Frey's invalidation of this process does nothing but direct people away from this track.

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.

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.

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.