A Million Little Pieces (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780307276902)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A gripping memoir about the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery from a bold and talented literary voice. "Anyone who has ever felt broken and wished for a better life will find inspiration in Frey's story." --People

"A great story.... You can't help but cheer his victory." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

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 facility's 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 Burroughs's 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--but their friendship and advice strikes James as stronger and truer than the clinic's 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 man's will and the ever-tempting chemical trip to oblivion, the fight to survive on his own terms, for reasons close to his own heart. "

Author: James Frey
ISBN-10: 0307276902
ISBN-13: 9780307276902
Publisher: Anchor Books
Language: English
Published: 09/22/2005
Pages: 448
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.01h x 5.25w x 0.90d

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 4.2
Point Value: 24
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 76681 / Million Little Pieces


Review Citation(s):
Newsweek 01/23/2006 pg. 62
Entertainment Weekly 03/21/2008 pg. 63
Vanity Fair 06/01/2008 pg. 143
Entertainment Weekly 05/16/2008 pg. 68
People Weekly 05/26/2008 pg. 60
Newsweek 07/13/2009 pg. 66
New Yorker (The) 01/25/0010 pg. 71
Entertainment Weekly 12/21/2012 pg. 73