Amazon.com Review
The electrifying opening of James Frey's debut memoir?? A Million Little Pieces?? smash-cuts to the then 23-year-old author on a Chicago-bound plane "vered with a colorful mixture of spit?? snot?? urine?? vomit and blood."nted by authorities in three states?? without ID or any money?? his face mangled and missing four front teeth?? Frey is on a steep descent from a dark marathon of drug abuse. His stunned family checks him into a famed Minnesota drug treatment center where a doctor promises "will be dead within a few days" if he starts to use again?? and where Frey spends two agonizing months of detox confronting "he Fury" head on:
I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest?? strongest?? most destructive?? most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack?? dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth?? five hundred hits of acid?? a garbage bag filled with mushrooms?? a tube of glue bigger than a truck?? a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.
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 " 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).