BOOKS: Oprah & A MILLION LITTLE PIECES

A MILLION LITTLE PIECES
by James Frey
(Anchor Books - May, 2004)

I was so excited when the news came out:
OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB RETURNS TO LIVING WRITERS!

With the October selection of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES by James Frey, Oprah’s gone back to featuring books by living authors: They are indeed easier (and more fun!) to interview on her show.

Since I have renewed focus with The Rebel Housewife on the blog and weekly book reviews, I figured it was perfect timing to coordinate Rebel Reviews, and some other book features on RebelHousewife.com, with Oprah’s Book Club.

I went out and bought A MILLION LITTLE PIECES in eager anticipation. The book immediately shot to #1 on Amazon.com as soon as it was announced. And I think that’s great--

As a reader, writer, author, and overall Book Fanatic, I think Oprah, in many ways, single-handedly brought back books and fired up the phenomenal social Book Club movement over the last several years with the literary features and focus on her show. That is HUGE. A lot of best-selling authors--some of my favorites!--owe their success to being chosen and featured by Oprah. The revival of featuring books by living authors is a wonderful thing.

With Rebel Reviews, I will coordinate with Oprah’s Book Club, at least to know what’s being read, promoted, and talked about. However, this is not Oprah’s Rebel Book Club, don’t worry, because I don’t always agree with Oprah on a GREAT book (i.e. The Corrections)...and, unfortunately, A MILLION LITTLE PIECES.

I don’t believe in force-finishing a book if you are not LOVING it--too many books, too little time. I got through the first hundred pages of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, and then decided I was ready to return it for exchange to get a book that I could enjoy.

As a working wife and mother with so much going on all the time, I savor my precious few opportunities to read a good book as therapy and escape--for enjoyment, pleasure, inspiration, maybe even to learn something new. There is none of that for me in A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, a choppy first-person narrative, the author’s memoir, about waking up at rock bottom and the minute-by-harrowing-minute experience of drug rehab. The writing is stark and brutal, and there is nothing redeeming here. The author is not a nice person, the story he tells is the stuff of nightmares. I finally gave in after a particularly graphic scene in a dentist’s office--major oral surgery, without anesthetic, because he’s in rehab. Yuck.

I praise Oprah, and thank her for coming back to the land of the living authors, but I’m going to let this one go and look forward to next month’s selection.

If rehab is a subject you are interested in reading about, I’d recommend RACHEL’S HOLIDAY (a novel) by Marian Keyes, or the movie 28 DAYS with Sandra Bullock. A little humor goes a long way in cold, stark, reality situations.

Live, Love & Laugh – Life is too short for ‘yucky’ books!