A Million Little Peices

I've been reading A Million Little Peices by James Fry for a while, at least over the summer. I havn't finished it yet because of my inability to read fast, and my lack of free time. I read it by the pool practically my entire summer vacation, and I've made it about half way through, a little farther I guess... it's been since summer that I have picked it up. I found out about this book last year when I did an independant reading project for my junior year (last year) english class. I was already reading a book, Impulse, but when my teacher did a slide show of books worth reading, A million Little Peices jumped out to me, and I went out and bought it so I could read it in my free time. The reason it jumped out to me is because it's about drug and alchohol addiction, and for my carrer I want to help people with those problems, I want to me a psychologist for addicts. A ways into reading this book my parents told me that this book was famous for being a fraud. James Fry titled this book as a biography, but it wasn't... well... not really. Instead it was a compilation of his own recovery stories, and recovery stories of people he met. I guess that makes sence when you read the book. There are so many times in the book where you can't help but think "He is so messed up, how can he possibly get better? How can he possibly be well enough to write a book. His rock bottom was so low, and he hit it so many times that how does a person recover completley from that." So when I found out that it wasn't really a biography but a compilation of a bunch of real experiences all jumbled up into James Fry's fictional self, I wasn't too bothered by the fact. When I think about it I really don't see how he could have titled it any other way, because in a way it is a biography, but it's also an autobiography because it tells of other peoples stories, but it's also a fiction because James Fry didn't do everything he said he did in the book because some of his actions were those of people that he met in real life. How do you write that on a book cover? "A Million Little Peices- a biography, autobiography, fiction, and everything in between" No one would read that. I guess he could have just left the "A Biography" off the cover page and just let it sit in a fiction or biography section of the library and wait for a curious soul like Oprah to pick it up and make it famous.
So, like I said I havn't looked at this book in a while, about 3 months, so the details of the book are kind of fuzzy. After reading two english books that are total mind ... messer-upers, like The Stranger, and The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nightime, the details of a book like A Million Little Peices  seem to fade away. I do remember the great underlying love story that James dips into detail ever so often. Without any spoilers, he slowly reveals to the reader that he met the girl of his dreams in college, and that his drinking and drug use messed it all up. She tried to get him sober, and for a while it worked. But... once and addict y'know?  I remember thinking, as the love tragedy slowly unfolded, "I can't blame her", but thinking too, "How horrible must he have felt". The story is enough to make you cry.
Along with the love story, There is a 2, maybe 3, possibly 4 page long description of James' experience of 2 root canals, all done with no anesthesia. This is DETAILED, let me tell you. I read it and it was like a car crash, or like watching the Jersey shore, You just can't look away, but while you're looking at it you're thinking "dear god make it stop, this is so horrible and awful". And it can't be any other way, He couldn't have writen this description like, "and they sawed some nerves in half and had to hold me down with straps and it hurt a lot" No. There was about 4 pages of him repeating the F word and I think he used the terms "red hot pain" and "white hot pain" about 50 times per page. How else can you convey a root canal with no medication.
The book is really amazing and I can't wait to finish it.