A Million Little Pieces

A Million Little Pieces is a memoir of a 23-year-old man who has been addicted to alcohol for 10 years and cocaine for 3 years.  The story is about his 6 weeks in rehab.  The delirious time of detox.  The fights between addicted men.  The bonds made between men you’d never expect to be friends.  The brutal reality of the pain of being an addict, a criminal, and keeping it all to oneself.

At first, this book was very hard for me to read.  I didn’t like how the paragraphs were set, his use of foul language, or the non-exsistant quotations marks to keep up with a conversation.  Once I got into the meat of the book, and waiting for his breakthrough in rehab, the pages seemed to zoom by.

At the end I cried because I was happy, and I cried because I was extremely sad to hear some of the outcomes.  I really enjoyed the book because the journey was difficult, heartwrenching, but it also gives a sense of hope.  And heck, it makes you appreciate your life (at least it did for me).

Onto the controversy:  I knew it was an Oprah Club Book, so I decided to go to her site and search for it.  I knew James Frey had been on the show previously, and I thought maybe I could catch a video of it.  All I seemed to stumble upon was the controversy of the book.  What controversy?!

If you are interested in reading it, I’d like to share this with you *before* you read the book.  As many of the readers, like me, find out afterwards.

“Oprah: James Frey is here and I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers. I think it’s such a gift to have millions of people to read your work and that bothers me greatly. So now, as I sit here today I don’t know what is true and I don’t know what isn’t. So first of all, I wanted to start with The Smoking Gun report titled, “The Man Who Conned Oprah” and I want to know—were they right?

James: Correct.”

Read the rest of the interview at Oprah’s website.