1. James Frey A Million Little Pieces Oprah
2. James Frey A Million Little Pieces Review Book Review
3. James Frey A Million Little Pieces Audiobook
4. James Frey A Million Little Pieces Quotes

A Million Little Pieces

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.

A Million Little Pieces. Random House, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 430 pages. A story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects piety, cynicism, and self-pity, it brings us face-to-face with a. A Million Little Pieces is a book by James Frey, originally sold as a memoir and later marketed as a semi-fictional novel following accusations of literary forgery. It tells the story of a 23-year-old alcoholic and abuser of other drugs and how he copes with rehabilitation in a twelve steps -oriented treatment center. Was James Frey's 'A Million Little Pieces' an ex-junkie's con job, part of a proud literary tradition, or just the standard hype of an increasingly embattled publishing industry? In his first U.S.

Genre: Memoir

Summary

Commentary

James Frey writes this memoir in punchy little sentences, unpunctuated except for periods and question marks, with very few commas and no quotation marks for speech. It has some of the repetitive quality and accumulative force of a long prose poem, and it also has the repetitive quality of drugs, each hit like the last (but still with the force of a hit). The burly, in-your-face quality matches the narrator's aggression and anger, which may not be appealing to all, but the machismo of the style also permits a striking honesty, and Frey's descriptions of addiction and withdrawal are all the more powerful for it.

This book is an important addition to the literature on alcoholism and drug addiction, partly because it is so unsparing in chronicling the vicissitudes of withdrawal and recovery, and partly because of its uncompromising style. At his most effective, Frey describes with gut-wrenching immediacy the experience of pain, whether it is in the dentist's chair undergoing dental repair without anaesthesia or painkillers; the agonies of withdrawal; or the emotional pain he always wanted to blank out with drugs and alcohol. Of note, this memoir also challenges the premises of faith in and the dogma of the Twelve Step program; the challenge is not unflawed, but is often effective.

1/27/06. Editorial note: Since this annotation was first written James Frey has been accused of fabricating significant material appearing in A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard. The author subsequently admitted that episodes in these books never took place or were exaggerated or changed. Hence there is a question whether the books can be classified as memoirs.

James Frey A Million Little Pieces Oprah

James Frey A Million Little Pieces Review Book Review

James Frey A Million Little Pieces Audiobook

A Million Little Pieces is the film adaptation of the harrowing and controversial story of James Frey's journey through addiction and rehab. Forced by his family to go to the Minnesota recovery facility Hazelden, James (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) meets Lilly (Odessa Young), a young woman also in recovery. Despite strict rules forbidding fraternizing, James and Lilly fall in love. Though she plays an essential part in James' rehab and recovery, it's unclear if the Lilly in A Million Little Pieces is actually based on a real person, and that question is central to the controversy surrounding Frey's memoir from more than a decade ago.

The film adaptation remains faithful to the book's version of events, in which James meets the 22 year-old Lilly in rehab. Originally from Phoenix, Lilly had been on the streets selling her body since age 13, and was addicted to crack and heroin. James describes her as 'tall and thin and long and blond like the thickest silk.' In recovery James falls in love with her, and the two sneak off to the woods to spend time together in defiance of Hazelden rules. When they're caught, Lilly runs away, but James rescues her from a crack house. Unfortunately, when Lilly needs him most — spiraling out of control after her grandmother dies — James is stuck in jail. He gets out and rushes to join her, only to find out that Lilly hung herself a few hours prior.

It's a compelling story, so much so that when Frey's version of events came into question after the Oprah's Book Club pick had its 'truths' torn to shreds by The Smoking Gun in 2006, the possibility that Lilly's existence was fabricated was one of the first questions an irate Oprah asks Frey.

Though James insists there 'absolutely' was a Lilly, when Oprah pushes him on details, he admits he altered the details of her death, as well as the dramatic timing of him just missing rescuing her again. The Freakonomics blog had undertaken a thorough investigation of Frey's initial claim, and while they found a woman who might match Lilly's description who died by hanging,other facts did not align. When t] new news of her death came to light, Freakonomics resumed research and concluded, 'There is no record in the mortality detail files [...] in Chicago around this time period that even remotely fits his description.'

James Frey A Million Little Pieces Quotes

Lilly is an awfully convenient figure for a story: an object of romantic obsession who helps James through recovery and provides a dramatic post-rehab moment that nearly derails him. With both Lilly and her grandmother gone and rehab records private, the only word we have to go on about Lilly is from James himself. Given his compounded and repeated lies about his own life, that's very shaky ground indeed.