A Million Little Pieces

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A Million Little Pieces
James Frey
2003

The Summary
Plain and simple, James Frey's novel is about addiction.  Written in the style of a memoir - which it's not, by the way.  Turns out there's more imagination than fact involved - A Million Little Pieces tells the story of one man's struggle against drug and alcohol abuse, and his fight to survive the anger which pushed him toward it in the first place.

The Good
In it's own way, Frey's novel is uplifting.  It presents a positive message about overcoming adversity and addiction.  More importantly, it is about triumphing over a particular addiction - and reclaiming life, before addiction takes it.

And that should be seen as the most important part.  Whether you will see that message through all the controversy over Frey's fraudulent "memoir," however, is yet to be seen.

The Bad
A Million Little Pieces is incredibly difficult to read because of its punctuation (meaning there is very little to speak of or none at all) and its style (it's more stream of consciousness, less deliberate literary intent).

These unusual erasures of quotation marks and haphazard construction of thoughts, however, provide Frey's novel with an intriguing style and depth.  As a reflection of the torn and conflicted mind of Frey's character, it seems appropriate, if not a little confusing and annoying.

The dialogue, in particular, becomes a sincere mess.  Although the dialogue seems to appropriately bounce back and forth between characters, as it might in real life, the lack of quotation marks creates a rather enormous problem:  who is speaking?  And when exactly did they start speaking?

You can be halfway through a conversation between characters, before realizing it was even a conversation in the first place.  There are very few markers to point out when actual dialogue has begun and Frey's own thoughts have ended.

Confusion will abound, I assure you.

The Ugly
Here's a list of things to expect in Frey's novel:  sex, violence, blood, drugs and alcohol (obviously), and gratuitous amounts of foul language.  Simply put, this is not a novel friendly to all audiences.