A Million Little Pieces

I read this during the middle of the Oprah bookclub debacle. Ultimately, I found it incredibly page-turning. James Frey is obviously talented. Take it as fiction and enjoy it.

Seems like a lot of people hate the author for some scandal I have never heard about and didn't bother to know about. Others are simply unimpressed with his writing style.

I, on the other hand, loved it. It was one of those books that shifted my focus and stayed with me like a bone graft.

I borrowed it from a friend when I was a senior in high school, right at the start of the most hysterical string of years in my life. I learned various forms of escapism and my state of mind matched that of the main character in the book. An ambiguous addiction, the pulverization of the self, the discovery of the Tao. The free structure of his prose matched that of my own scribblings on little journals from those years. The characters became my friends, so much so that I had to find a copy of My Friend Leonard online.

Absolutely adore this book..Impactful !

I wish this wasn't half fiction/half memoir.

I'm sad for Lilly. Poor girl.

I read this book years after the whole “true story” scandal came out, and when I bought it from a used bookstore, my people kind of gave me a look like, “You know that's fake, right?” Other friends of mine read the book before the scandal, and resented Frey afterwards for misrepresenting his story as true. Let me preface this by saying that I was intrigued by the ire readers expressed in finding out the story they read was fiction. Personally and ethically, I do think it was wrong of Frey to say this was a true story when it wasn't. I read this after the scandal - who knows how I would feel finding out the memoir I just read was fake...? So going into it, knowing everything I know, here are my thoughts:

I COULDN'T PUT THE BOOK DOWN!! Okay so yes, the weight of what happened to Frey has been taken out of the book because of it being a fictionalized account, but looking at it from a story's perspective, taking out all the scandal, I really liked this book. I jumped in feet-first and drank it up until the end. I enjoyed his writing style - not what I would normally go for - and it worked very well in telling this tale. I have two other Frey titles on my bookshelf, waiting patiently for me to pick them up.

This book came to the attention of the nation through Oprah, who thought it was fabulous. However, when she discovered that parts of this memoir were fictional, she had a fit, brought the author back onto the show, and read him the riot act. I thought that it was an amazing first book, WAY out there, a report back from the depths of drug addiction. I assumed that some of it was invented, only because it was so wildly fantastic at times. The reader needs to be prepared for a painful and overwhelming experience.

The reason why I chose to read this book is because it was added to Oprah's book club a couple of years ago; evidently leading up to her biggest humiliation of the book NOT being entirely true (it was “supposed” to be a memoir). So I defintely had to check out what this man would embellish about his hard, depressing and drug/alcohol affiliated life. The book is defintely a page turner if I may say so. His writing style is defintely not like most authors; the sentence structure and the line breaks sometimes resemble a poem, but it clearly isnt. His repetition of the pain he went through to recover from his hardcore addiction strengthen his message. Sometimes though the repetition got annoying, but overall, this was a really good book, he should of just said that it was a work of fiction though.

Fiction or Non-Fiction, I don't care... it's a good book.

My book club couldn't stop talking about everything that happens in this book. It was almost too unbelievable. Then it turned out we were right.