My Friend Leonard

The author's first book, A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, is the Oprah-endorsed bestselling memoir that turned out to be scandalously untrue. "Mr. Bravado Tough Guy,'' Winfrey called the addict-alcoholic-criminal whom she had championed until a muckraking Web site revealed his lies. If MY FRIEND LEONARD, which takes up the author's relationship with a mobster and fellow addict, is also mostly fiction, it is atrocious fiction--florid, melodramatic, redundant, tasteless, and perversely self-aggrandizing. Andy Paris's unctuous interpretation matches the writing in quality. He reads in cadences so monotonous as to make ridiculous all his efforts at tension and pathos. For vicarious thrill-seekers only. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine


Controversial writer James Frey's memoir recounts his relationship with his father, an Italian mobster who offers him employment and, in doing so, becomes a friend to his son for the fist time. Whether Frey's story is entirely true or not, given the controversy surrounding his first memoir, A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, narrator Andy Paris offers a compelling reading. Paris steps into Frey's shoes and relates the most intimate details of his life with seeming ease, and there is an underlying emotionality in his voice that makes it sound as if Frey were relating the story himself. A richly textured performance. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 28, 2005
Frey achieves another stylistic coup as he develops a narrative thread begun in 2003's A Million Little Pieces
. He chronicles his journey out of the terrifying darkness of addiction, and the friend he meets along the way, Leonard. A gangster, raconteur and mentor, Leonard was introduced in Pieces
as one of Frey's new rehab friends. Here, he pushes Frey out into the world, pampering him one moment, giving him tough love the next. As in Pieces
, Frey's style throughout is loose, untraditional yet perfectly crafted: " offered me his hand and said good, I'm fucked up too, and I like fucked-up people, let's sit and eat and see if we can be friends. I took his hand and I shook it and we sat down and we ate together and we became friends." There's something mesmerizing about the endless tumble of words, the nonstop spilling out of Frey's troubles and triumphs. In the hands of a less capable writer, all of this cool, tight narration might numb the reader and distance the experience. Instead, this book packs a full-body emotional wallop. Frey's eye is keen for detail: the inside of a county lockup; the flat, gray Chicago winter; an out-of-control Super Bowl party in Los Angeles; the grind of living day to day—all come alive in his sparse, powerful prose. At its core, this is an examination of a friendship. Frey's extraordinary relationship with Leonard is alive, a flesh-and-blood bond forged in the agony of rehab and sustained through honesty and trust. Agent, Kassie Evashevski at Brillstein/Grey Entertainment.