A Million Little Pieces

I'll be the first to admit those Oprah's Book Club stickers bug me. For awhile it was because I knew it meant the book was going to tell the story of incest or abuse with an amazing protaganist turn around by book's end (think The Lovely Bones). She started expanding her choices, including Faulkner and McCarthy, but still...her pushiness and cult following (ladies, really, does a multi-millionaire woman have so much in common with you, trying to pay off student loans while raising two kids and facing a home foreclosure?) irked me. I cheered when Jonathan Franzen rejected her and refused to be a guest on her show, and I cringed and rooted for James Frey when she publicly derided him.

Having not actually read A Million Little Pieces, I thought: now's the time, and why not compare it to Jonathan Franzen's book of essays, How To Be Alone (I'd read The Corrections years ago and loved it).

First up, A Million Little Pieces. Steph gives a nice synopsis here, so I won't go through all that. But honestly, I was disappointed. Maybe it was because it was hyped in so many ways-- before he was exposed, and after. I just didn't think the writing was that great. He capitalizes a lot of Things and is very repetative. I'm not sure if I was influenced by the fact I knew he had exxagerated and made up parts of his story, but I found a lot of it completely unbelievable, and was surprised so many people bought it, hook, line and sinker. It was all tied up very neatly and in fact read pretty well as a novel, save for the bad writing. I was captivated for sure, and won't become a drug addict anytime soon, so I guess in that regards it's successful. I give this book 3 netflix stars. And I recommend drinking gin and tonics while reading it, because it's kind of more kick ass that way.