James Frey wakes up on a plane, with no memory of the preceding two weeks. His face is cut and his body is covered with bruises. He has no wallet and no idea of his destination. He has abused alcohol and every drug he can lay his hands on for a decade - and he is aged only twenty-three. What happens next is one of the most powerful and extreme, and honest, stories ever told. His family takes him to a rehabilitation centre. And James Frey starts his perilous journey back to the world of the drug and alcohol-free living. His lack of self-pity gives him an unflinching, often searing honesty. "A Million Little Pieces" is an uncommonly genuine account of a life destroyed and a life reconstructed. It is also the introduction of a bold and talented literary voice.
I wanted to like this book. His candid descriptions of drug addiction and the recovery process were truly fascinating. But knowing that some of the events weren't true bothered me. Some say that that's creative license, and I say that's fine, but he marketed the book as a memoir, which to me implies that everything is as true as he can remember, and only the unimportant details (like what someone was wearing or the exact wording of dialogue) are fudged. Frey admitted, after someone called him out on it, that some of the significant events in the book weren't true, which detracted from the impact of the whole book for me, not knowing what really happened and what didn't. I also wasn't a fan of his stylistic choice to capitalize certain nouns (like "People," "Room," etc.), use no quotation marks on dialogue, and not indent his paragraphs. I probably would have let it slide if he had just capitalized Addict, Addiction, Criminal, and that sort of thing, but he capitalized so many unimportant objects that it was distracting. The lack of quotation marks and indentations simply made it difficult to read, difficult to sink myself into the story. I had to read actively so I could differentiate dialogue from narration and identify who was speaking. If you think you're willing to look past the writing style, it's a good book, but--fair warning--definitely not to be read while eating. I have a fairly strong stomach, but there were a few scenes where I had to put the book down until I was done eating, and afterwards I could only read a few lines at a time, shutting the book and closing my eyes for a few seconds in between.
