Amazing book! | My Friend Leonard

Liked it better than Million Little Pieces | My Friend Leonard | James Frey

books:


	• My Friend Leonard James Frey Riverhead Hardcover, 2005 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 378 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

nice a friend like this

The book is very good written and read, and I also would have a friend like Leonard, he is very good.

Amazing book!

This might just be the best book I have ever read. It's a great story, a great 'sequel' to "A Million Little Pieces". I definitely recommend this book to anyone!

Liked it better than Million Little Pieces

In my copy of this book, I couldn't find one notation at all as to where this book is fiction, a memoir or what. So, I read it thinking it was true (it's a little more fun to read that way), but ended suspecting as I did all along that much of this story was made up. But, I'm not sure...my copy just doesn't have any info and what I look up online seems to vary.

Moving on....I really enjoyed this book! In fact, I liked it more than A Million Little Pieces. Probably in part because this was a much happier book, even though a lot of depressing things happen. Also, once you're already familiar with a set of characters, it seems the second time around you enjoy them even more, almost as if they are friends. Either way, I liked the book for the most part.

As with AMLP, Frey's writing style can grate on your nerves. The fact that many of his sentences are run-ons and omitt proper punctuation, it's just annoying. The editor should have fixed this. I don't feel it added anything to this story. What I did like, was how some pages only contained one paragraph or two. This was done I believe to demonstrate a significant event or show a passage of time. Either way, I liked that aspect.

What sealed the deal for me? The last few pages I was in tears. I'm a very avid reader, but this doesn't happen often. I was that attached to the characters and what was written was that moving.

Overall I'd recommend this book to a friend. Although I still don't know if I'd recommend it as fiction or non.

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So touching, so good

I have strong feelings about memoirs. I believe that everyone remembers things their own way, and in Frey's case we cannot expect a drug addict to remember things the way it actually happened. This story is amazing and touching and surprising. I am glad I read it after A Million Little Pieces. I am also glad I grew up in Los Angeles, it helped me visualize the scenes better. Frey's writing style flows like thoughts and it helped me really get the things he was feeling, the way he just let it flow.

Perhaps the most unconventional and literally breathtaking father-son story you'll ever read, My Friend Leonard pulls you immediately and deeply into a relationship as unusual as it is inspiring.

The father figure is Leonard, the high-living, recovering coke addict "West Coast Director of a large Italian-American finance firm" (read: mobster) who helped to keep James Frey clean in A Million Little Pieces. The son is, of course, James, damaged perhaps beyond repair by years of crack and alcohol addiction-and by more than a few cruel tricks of fate.

James embarks on his post-rehab existence in Chicago emotionally devastated, broke, and afraid to get close to other people. But then Leonard comes back into his life, and everything changes. Leonard offers his "son" lucrative-if illegal and slightly dangerous-employment. He teaches James to enjoy life, sober, for the first time. He instructs him in the art of "living boldly," pushes him to pursue his passion for writing, and provides a watchful and supportive veil of protection under which James can get his life together. Both Leonard's and James's careers flourish . . . but then Leonard vanishes. When the reasons behind his mysterious absence are revealed, the book opens up in unexpected emotional ways.

My Friend Leonard showcases a brilliant and energetic young writer rising to important new challenges-displaying surprising warmth, humor, and maturity-without losing his intensity. This book proves that one of the most provocative literary voices of his generation is also one of the most emphatically human.

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