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A Million Little Pieces

By James Frey

(31)

| Audio Cassette | 9781565117778

Book Description

Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, A Million Little Pieces is 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 provocative new understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery.

By the time he entered a drug and alcohol treatment facility, James Frey had taken his addictions to near-deadly extremes. He had so thoroughly ravaged his body that the facilityís doctors were shocked he was still alive. The ensuing torments of detoxification and withdrawal, and the never-ending urge to use chemicals, are captured with a vitality and directness that recalls the seminal eye-opening power of William Burroughsís Junky.

But A Million Little Pieces refuses to fit any mold of drug literature. Inside the clinic, James is surrounded by patients as troubled as he is -- including a judge, a mobster, a one-time world-champion boxer, and a fragile former prostitute to whom he is not allowed to speak ó but their friendship and advice strikes James as stronger and truer than the clinicís droning dogma of How to Recover. James refuses to consider himself a victim of anything but his own bad decisions, and insists on accepting sole accountability for the person he has been and the person he may become--which runs directly counter to his counselors' recipes for recovery.

James has to fight to find his own way to confront the consequences of the life he has lived so far, and to determine what future, if any, he holds. It is this fight, told with the charismatic energy and power of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, that is at the heart of A Million Little Pieces: the fight between one young manís will and the ever-tempting chemical trip to oblivion, the fight to survive on his own terms, for reasons close to his own heart.

A Million Little Pieces is an uncommonly genuine account of a life destroyed and a life reconstructed. It is also the introduction of a bold and talented literary voice.

4 Reviews

3 people find this helpful

AWESOME book!!! I'd read it again in a heart beat. There were some slow parts, some depressing parts, but it's worth the read. I don't care what people think about James Frey, he is an awesome writer and I applaud him!!!

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― mndy said on Feb 13, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Even though James Frey caught a lot of flack for labeling his book as an autobiography, I thought it was a good story. I didn't have a clue as to what people with alcohol and drug addiction go through on a daily basis and also what treatment is like for them. I found it interesting.

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― Jamie Gemuend767 said on Sep 8, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Ignore the haters

This book rocks. Screw the nitpickers.

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― DrVermin said on Jun 6, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

A Million Little Pieces

Regardless of how much of this story is true and how much of this story is fabricated, it is still a raw, terse tale of the fight against addiction.

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― Readingrat said on Dec 2, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

Rating:
(31)
- 4 stars
- 3 stars
- 2 stars
- 1 star
English Books
Audio Cassette 600 Pages
Edition: Abridged
ISBN-10: 1565117778
ISBN-13: 9781565117778
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Pub date: Apr 28, 2003
Also available as: Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD, School & Library Binding and Others