‘A Million Little Pieces’ by James Frey

Forget about fact, forget about fiction, and forget about the distinction between the two. Forget about Oprahgate and forget about the naysayers because all that truly matters is that American author James Frey has written an enormously affecting and quite literally fucking awesome book. It is called A Million Little Pieces.

A Million Little Pieces might be a novel or it might be a memoir but in reality it is most likely neither. What it is, however, is the story of a twenty-three-year-old male, also named James Frey, battling a long fought addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine. We first meet James as he is reluctantly checking into a rehabilitation centre in chilly Minnesota, toothless and apparently devoid of hope or future. Five hundred pages later and James is reintroduced to the outside world, facing jail time but markedly more optimistic than before.

But it is not a simple, straightforward tale of rehabilitation; the James Frey of A Million Little Pieces is an intelligent but usually disagreeable fellow who has little patience for the conventional methods of Alcoholics Anonymous. He deplores the idea of there being a God or ‘higher power’ to whom he can turn to help fight his addictions.

There are moments in the book that are truly touching, such as the author’s description of his romantic trysts with the beautiful but battered Lilly and his friendship with the always entertaining Leonard - a character so enigmatic that James Frey went on to write an entire book about him in the form of My friend Leonard. But what Frey really excels at is painting a vividly brutal scene, be it in his description of a cesspit Minneapolis crack house or his toe-curling account of undergoing a root canal procedure without anaesthetic. Ouch.

It was Bret Easton Ellis’ overwhelmingly positive jacket quote which prompted me to take this particular book to the till and I am certainly glad that I took heed of his praise. Fans of the American Psycho author will no doubt respond to Frey’s spare and candid prose style, as well as his unflinchingly detailed tales of vomiting up chunks of his own stomach and ripping a whole toenail off - the latter of which had me wincing on public transport. A remarkable feat.

So, is it a novel or is it a memoir? Quite frankly it is irrelevant; people blur the lines between truth and lies all the time in real life, and if they all did it with the flair and eloquence of James Frey, maybe the world would be a better place. A Million Little Pieces simply is what it is: a remarkable tale of personal growth and overcoming addiction, and an essential read for anybody.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in August 2011.