author: James Frey

name: Steev

average rating: 3.46

book published: 2003

rating: 5

read at: 2011/02/27

date added: 2011/03/01

shelves: spirit-self

review:
Granted, I never would have read this book if it hadn't been the center of such controversy and hadn't been famous for its author getting in trouble for fabricating certain parts of it while his publishers marketed it as "memoir". I'm extremely interested in books that blur fiction and non-fiction, and it's true that pondering which bits were true and which weren't definitely made the book more interesting. Even so, regardless of its level of truthiness, Frey is a very skilled writer and one who is clearly interested in experimenting with form. He's got a really terse, intense style low on punctuation and high on interior emotional depth. In fact it had me tearing up at regular intervals, approximately every 5 to 10 pages.



In his book "Reality Hunger" David Shields says literature should teach us something about dealing with life, not just allow us to escape life. In a way "A Million Little Pieces" succeeds at doing both, at least for me. I look forward to reading some of Frey's other work. The ironic thing about the persecution of Frey at the hands of Oprah and her fans is that in really bumped his career into overdrive. There's no such thing as bad publicity. And there's no such thing as a totally true memoir.