"The most lacerating tale of drug addiction since William S. Burroughs' Junky." --The Boston Globe "Again and again, the book delivers recollections that leave the reader winded and unsteady. James Frey's staggering recovery memoir could well be seen as the final word on the topic."--San Francisco Chronicle "A brutal, beautifully written memoir."--The Denver Post "Gripping . . . A great story . . . You can't help but cheer his victory." --Los Angeles Times Book Review
News from Doubleday & Anchor Books The controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it doesn't matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them.
It is, however, Doubleday and Anchor's policy to stand with our authors when accusations are initially leveled against their work, and we continue to believe this is right and proper. A publisher's relationship with an author is based to an extent on trust. Mr. Frey's repeated representations of the book's accuracy, throughout publication and promotion, assured us that everything in it was true to his recollections. When the Smoking Gun report appeared, our first response, given that we were still learning the facts of the matter, was to support our author. Since then, we have questioned him about the allegations and have sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.
We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A Million Little Pieces. We are immediately taking the following actions:
We are issuing a publisher's note to be included in all future printings of the book.*
James Frey has written an author's note that will appear in all future printings of the book.* Read the author's note.
The jacket for all future editions will carry the line "With new notes from the publisher and from the author." *Customers should find the Author's Note and Publisher's Note in copies purchased from Amazon.com after April 15, 2006. Note: The following editorial reviews were written before the recent revelations by James Frey and the publisher. Amazon.com The electrifying opening of James Frey's debut memoir, A Million Little Pieces, smash-cuts to the then 23-year-old author on a Chicago-bound plane "covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood." Wanted by authorities in three states, without ID or any money, his face mangled and missing four front teeth, Frey is on a steep descent from a dark marathon of drug abuse. His stunned family checks him into a famed Minnesota drug treatment center where a doctor promises "he will be dead within a few days" if he starts to use again, and where Frey spends two agonizing months of detox confronting "The Fury" head on:
I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.
One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.
The rage-fueled memoir is kept in check by Frey's cool, minimalist style. Like his steady mantra, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal," Frey's use of repetition takes on a crisp, lyrical quality which lends itself to the surreal experience. The book could have benefited from being a bit leaner. Nearly 400 pages is a long time to spend under Frey's influence, and the stylistic acrobatics (no quotation marks, random capitalization, left-aligned text, wild paragraph breaks) may seem too self-conscious for some readers, but beyond the literary fireworks lurks a fierce debut. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
A great book thats hard to put down:
Over the years, I wondered how hard it actually is to over come a drug addiction. This book portrayed a terrific perspective on rehab and the recovery process.A Million Little Pieces is one of my favorite all-time books because you are really feeling James pain in graphic, yet thrilling scenes. James Frey writes as himself as he enters the second phase of his life: rehab. You can really get into this books because the problems he faces in this book are life threatening and so unusual. In the past, I... more info
Breathtaking:
I loved this book, novel, memoir, whatever you want to call it. No matter how you want to put it, the words on the pages of this were heartbreaking, meaningful and powerful to the nth degree. Frey obviously had the talent to tell the story to illicit the most of the reader's emotions. To sum it up, one of the best books I have ever read, true or not.
2 1/2. Way over hyped:
"A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey James Frey awakens to find himself on a commercial airliner bound for Chicago. Apparently he has been placed on the plane by a doctor and will be met by his parents when he lands who will deliver him to one of the best addiction treatment centers in the country. Although only 23, James' addiction to alcohol and crack amongst other things has done substantial damage to his body and if he doesn't quit now it isn't likely that he will see 24. As a stand alone... more info
Was interested in the beginning.. badly written fiction.:
His intense descriptions about his addiction captured me through the first 50 pages or so and then after that, I had to MAKE myself read. I'm now on page 100 or so and this will probably be the first book I stop reading in the middle. It's extremely repetitive and horribly fake.
