My Friend Leonard is the story of an extraordinary friendship formed in the most unlikely circumstances.
While in rehab, James Frey finds a father figure in Leonard, a shady mafia boss. When Leonard returns to his dubious, prosperous life in the criminal underworld of Las Vegas, he promises James his support on the outside.
[Continued below…]
Tragedy strikes the day James is released and his world seems set to implode. Unsure where to turn, he calls Leonard. Paradoxically, it is in Leonard’s lawless underworld that James discovers the courage and humanity needed to rebuild his life.
(From: Frey, 2006)
There are two plots running concurrently throughout this book. James’ and Leonard’s. James’ plot was predictable and at times felt as though it lacked direction. Leonard’s plot was much more exciting with some massively unexpected, yet pleasant twists.
The engaging writer’s voice keeps the Reader reading on. The plot is suitably fast-paced and slower-paced in all the appropriate places. The Reader will empathise with the characters and come to care for them. This in turn creates a desire in the Reader to find out what happens to them.
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey is addictive like crack cocaine. Once you pick it up and start reading, you’ll find it near impossible to put back down.
From the cover:
Aged just twenty-three, James Frey had destroyed his body and his mind almost beyond repair. When he enters a rehabilitation centre to try to reclaim his life, he has to fight to determine what future, if any, he has. His lack of self-pity, cynicism and piety gives him an unflinching honesty – a fearless candour that is at once charming and appalling, searing and darkly funny.
(From: Frey, 2004)
Frey takes the reader on his rollercoaster of a journey to recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. It starts with him waking up on a plane with no memory of how he got there, what happened to his face or where he’s going.
A Million Little Pieces is set during Frey’s stay in rehab; is well paced and has plenty of tension, conflict and resolution. Both internally and externally. He recalls memories of his dysfunctional and chaotic alcohol and drug using past.
Stylistically A Million Little Pieces lacked speech marks, but this was possibly deliberate. Not having speech marks was a noticeable stylistic change to the normal layout of a book. Frey was probably using this to subtly hint that his story wasn’t like the story of most people. Frey’s lack of dialogue tags was generally acceptable, but on the odd occasion where Frey had written a scene with a group of people, it did get difficult to establish who had said what.
Towards the end of A Million Little Pieces it began to feel fictional. As I was coming to the end of the book and had enjoyed reading it, I decided to look into other books that Frey had written.
Oprah had to respond to these revelations and interviewed Frey on a few occasions. The most recent, a few years after A Million Little Pieces was exposed as being in part fictional is available to watch below:
I can understand while some people felt lied to, as A Million Little Pieces was promoted and marketed as a memoir.
But I wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised that some of A Million Little Pieces was fact and some was fiction. Because that’s how it read. Who wouldn’t change some of their past if they had the chance? Don’t we all do that all the time? Change things to make them sound better or worse than they actually are with the aim of making our stories more interesting to our friends, family, co-workers, etc. Can we really blame Frey for doing the same for the reader?
Regardless A Million Little Pieces is still a great read. Worth reading if you are interested in addiction, crime, alcohol, drugs, rehab and recovery. Just hold on is a phrase often repeated in the book and was a phrase that I adopted when I was suffering from severe clinical depression.
On New Years Eve, I spent the day and evening relaxing with Dylan and Russell, my bengal cats.
They enjoy anything warm and spent most of the evening cat napping on their new heated mat and the Sky Box, see photos below (click on images for full size):
Russell Cat Napping Against My Foot on the Heated Mat.
Dylan Cat Napping on the Warm Sky Box.
While they napped, I read and watched TV. I got throughly absorbed into the world of James Frey in his book A Million Little Pieces. I’m about 100 pages in and will complete a review when I’ve finished reading it. If you want to know more about A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, click on the image below to visit Amazon:
Blog soon,
Antony
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Thursday 1 January 2015
About
Antony Simpson - Author, Blogger, Nurse & Witch.
Author of eight books.
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