Blog this item |
Similar books
Tao Te Ching | The Year of Magical Thinking | What Remains | The Glass Castle | The Only Girl in the Car |
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.
Groups with this in collection
50 Book Challenge! (317) |
- Book Details
- English Books
- Rating:



(58)
4 stars 
3 stars 
2 stars 
1 star 
- School & Library Binding
- ISBN-10: 1417634391
- ISBN-13: 9781417634392
- Publisher: Rebound by Sagebrush
- Pub date: May 01, 2004
- Also available as: Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD, Audio Cassette and Others

FAQ
How does the voting work?
Find a comment helpful / unhelpful? Cast your vote. Only one vote from each person will be counted. Every hour we gather all the votes, add them up, add some magic source, and there we have the new sorting for the comments on the page of this book!I see mistakes in the book information. How can I fix it?
Under "Book details", there is a link labeled "Improve data of this book". You can use that form to send us the correct information.



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!!!
This book rocks. Screw the nitpickers.
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.
Ugh. I don't even care whether it's true or not (maybe if he'd set out to write a novel, the self-aggrandizement might actually have been interesting). The writing is dreadful- he's the male version of the teenage girl who fancies herself the new Sylvia Plath despite lacking both talent and traged ... Continue
Ugh. I don't even care whether it's true or not (maybe if he'd set out to write a novel, the self-aggrandizement might actually have been interesting). The writing is dreadful- he's the male version of the teenage girl who fancies herself the new Sylvia Plath despite lacking both talent and tragedy. Just substitute Hemingway for Plath, and you have James Frey.