It's easy to see why James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, has stoked word-of-mouth among booksellers and publishing insiders months before its April publication. Just read the first page, where he recounts how he awoke on a plane to find he had a hole torn in his cheek, four missing teeth, a broken nose, clothes crusted in blood and vomit, and no clue how he'd gotten there or where he was going. In the following chapters, Frey keeps readers wondering why this privileged white kid first got drunk at age 10, and was blacking out daily on drugs and alcohol by 19. Wanted in three states when he stumbled off that plane at age 23, he was too wrecked from a face-first fall down a fire escape to resist his waiting parents, who put him in rehab.
Frey writes in a free-flowing yet unrelentingly detailed style that draws heavily on his daily journals from the unnamed clinic in rural Minnesota (which he has since admitted is Hazelden). As he grinds through his every thought and action, painstakingly plumbing the rage exposed by his enforced sobriety, he skillfully treads the line between literary memoir and recovery writing.
"You'd think that raw quality and his horrible experience would weigh you down, but you can't take your eyes off the page," said Edward Ash-Milby, who buys memoirs at Barnes & Noble. In addition to Frey's lack of piety about the recovery process and his utterly pitiless attitude toward himself, Ash-Milby cited his male voice as an additional element that distinguishes the memoir.
Judging by early signs, the book's prospects are good: it's been selected for Borders's Original Voices and Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Authors programs, and was tapped as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and QPB main selection. And the print run has doubled since the book was first announced, to 35,000 copies. Meanwhile, foreign rights have sold in eight countries. Not bad for a manuscript that was acquired for $50,000. If the subject matter doesn't seem typical of the titles published by Nan Talese's tony imprint at Doubleday, that's because it was acquired by Sean McDonald before he moved to Riverhead as a senior editor and handed the book over to new editor Coates Bateman.
At the end of January, the buzz ratcheted up when a New York Observer article seized on film director Gus Van Sant's jacket blurb comparing Frey's "horribly honest and funny style" to that of Dave Eggers. Titled "Meet the Staggering New Genius," the Observer interview wrung considerable drama out of 33-year-old Frey's declaration that, after seven years in Hollywood as a moderately successful producer and screenwriter, he was now trying to write the best book of his generation. Then again, Frey also openly objected to Kirkus's verdict that his book was "at times pretentious in its self-regard, yet ultimately breathtaking."
The article left some wondering if Frey—who spit out enough expletives to nail shut his own coffin—could stand up to the scrutiny of a media jaded by precocious young authors. But it didn't capture the side of him that emerged during a recent lunchtime appearance at Random House headquarters in Manhattan, before employees who had read and discussed the book with the company's voluntary book club, Random Reads.
Though the crowd was clearly a friendly one—made up of employees from sales, editorial, IT, contracts and numerous other departments across the corporation—the venue didn't prove so easy. Without any fanfare to speak of, Frey was thrust into a conference room packed with about 80 people, mostly women aged 22 to 45, who were said to be bursting with questions for him. With coiled energy that matched his self-portrait as a bruiser, he settled in his chair, taking in the ranks of faces that were searching his own for obvious scars, as a disquieting silence descended on the room. When people began to speak out at last, Frey responded methodically to impassioned questions that ranged from whether he still felt the fury that courses through the book to how his parents felt about his writing. Within a few minutes, he had created an atmosphere of intimacy bordering on painful honesty that held the entire audience rapt for more than an hour.
Banking on Frey's charisma—despite the many "f-bombs" he can't seem to help dropping—Doubleday has planned meetings with Borders managers and booksellers in New York City and Los Angeles. Coverage is scheduled for the May issues of Elle, Esquire, GQ, Men's Journal, Details, Black Book and Interview, where Frey is featured as one of five debut writers. In late April, his 14-city tour begins, with reps in most cities planning to take him to every account in their area. He is also slated to appear in an upcoming ABC News special on addiction.
"I think public will respond pretty passionately to the book, whether the critics like it or not," said buyer Cathy Langer of Denver's Tattered Cover. "The cover is eye-catching, it has a great opening, and Frey is masterful in getting you to keep reading. You feel you're being injected with something, you want more, and he gives it to you."
