A Million Little Pieces

James Frey's A Million Little Pieces shatters
perceptions of success and failure in a
straightforward one-two knockout combination, both in
the book and in his public life. A Million Little
Pieces is the current New York Times non-fiction
paperback best seller and source of a prevalent media
vivisection of biographical falsehoods. Success and
failure are as bittersweet in life as they are in his
work.



Fifteen weeks as a best seller and a glowing
endorsement from Oprah, who added A Million Little
Pieces to her book club, hardly ring with enthusiasm
amid the fracas over whether or not Frey deliberately
created fake life events in his "supposedly
questionable" non-fiction offering. From whichever
side of the boxing ring you view the fight, one glance
at the book itself will reveal that Frey is no
stranger to hard knocks and surprising upsets.



The first chapter jumpstarts the story by introducing
in very graphic terms a disfigured face, drug-addled
Frey on a plane to a rehabilitation clinic which
serves as the setting for the novel. The tale of his
demise and subsequent regeneration intertwine in a
straight-talking, rapid-cadence recollection that
lacks most punctuation or even a single defined
paragraph. Take a journal, left align everything,
remove all empty white space, and spice it with
teeth-gritting attitude: the result is Frey's A
Million Little Pieces. His fall and crawl back to
life, mirrored in reality albeit in reverse, stirs a
proud respect in a spitfire, can't-put-it-down
whirlwind which leaves the reader gasping for a
follow-up. My Friend Leonard, the sequel, is an
undecided second-round opponent.