bookpiggy.com - book reviews by a book lover

Bright Shiny Morning - This doesn’t mean I like James Frey….

I thought long and hard before buying this book. On several different trips to my local bookstore, I picked it up, read a few pages, then put it back down and vowed not to cave. I was one of those who read A Million Little Pieces, only later to learn that Mr. Frey embellished and downright lied about many of the accounts included in his ‘memoir’ of his battle with addiction. I vividly remember sitting on the couch in 2006 cheering on Oprah as she lambasted him for faking parts of his book, months after she had named it to her book club and helped him sell god knows how many copies. So this time, I planned to snub his new book.

The only problem with this plan was that I really liked the first few pages that I read in the store. The third time I picked up the book, I finished the first chapter and reasoned that authors don’t really make that much money off each book, and it was on sale so hopefully he’d make an even smaller fraction of profit from my sale (although on further reflection, I don’t think it works like that) so it wouldn’t really matter that much if I bought it. For good measure, I vowed not to buy any further books from this author.

So I caved… and loved it. Bright Shiny Morning was an excellent read, as it followed four stories of different people living in Los Angeles: a young couple who move from Ohio to escape abusive parents and start the life they’ve dreamed of, a drunk who lives in a bathroom and tries to rescue a young girl from life on the streets, a ridiculously successful actor who lives with his lesbian wife and their children while aggressively pursuing various boyfriends, and a teenage girl from Mexico who falls in love with the son of the woman she cleans house for. The stories are definitely a bit random, and they never come together, but I really enjoyed the unique style of writing and was dying to know what happened next to the characters. The young couple were my favorites.

I can’t recall every having such a moral dilemma over a book purchase, but if you can bring yourself to buy it, I think you’ll enjoy.

4.5 out of 5 piggy snorts. I might even give it 5/5 if it wasn’t James Frey.