Puppy Morning: A puppy’s book review of ‘A Million Little Pieces’

Book Review: A Million Little Pieces
By Brandy, age 1

Bark! Hi, my name is Brandy. I’m a doggy, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. I like sticks and plastic bottles. I dislike people who don’t pet me and computer screen savers (especially the flying windows). I also like to read, as shown in this photo.

Sometime earlier this year, I read the James Frey memoir A Million Little Pieces. I thought it was well-written, but I was a little surprised by the big furor over it. Arf!

You see, the reason why I was surprised by the whole brouhaha is, well, how could someone be so stupid to actually believe the book was 100 percent true? Even though I’m a puppy, I knew after the first page that this book had lots of made up woof in it, the author’s insistence that he didn’t make anything up notwithstanding.

In the first paragraph, James Frey is sitting on an airplane with a hole in his cheek, a broken nose and eyes nearly swollen shut. He’s covered in spit, snot, peepee, vomit and blood. Ew! And although he writes that a doctor brought him on board, well, I didn’t buy it. It was a little too far-fetched for me. And I like to fetch.

Anyway, the book was a fun read, but I took it with a grain of puppy chow from the beginning. Now, it’s made up, and people are complaining endlessly and suing the publisher and Oprah went nuts on her show — after her original plan of being nice to James Frey got bad reviews, of course — and I sort of feel bad for the guy. But, still, there’s just one thing I want to do to Oprah and Frey and the people suing and all the people who accepted the book as 100 percent true: Grr.

A Million Little Pieces [Amazon]