A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

James Frey, a 23 year old writes about his fight against drugs and alcohol addiction. Many critics lauded the book as 'war and peace' of addiction. Featured in Oprah's Book Club, this highly sentimental and powerful memoir creates a long lasting impression on the reader's mind.

One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.

An Amazon.com reviewer "hllib" writes:

This is a worthwhile read. But it's not the War and Peace of addiction, as it says on the back cover

Also by James Frey:
My Friend Leonard, On this page you will also find James Frey answering amazon.com's significant seven series of questions.

Tags: Books, Nonfiction, Memoir