Bright Shiny Morning Reviews

• My Hope

  
  By A1LMQHB3ZANNVN on 2008-05-14
  I was the first to get the book from my local Barnes and Nobles and I know this because they told me this--I read a lot. I read Austen and Bronte. I read Hemingway and Faulkner. I read Mailer and Vidal. I read I read I read. You'll have to trust me when I say that I consider myself a literate person, a published writer, and a harsh and unbearable critic--of self and others--and I haven't read all of Bright Shiny Morning yet. I have read four hundred and ten pages of it. With the negative reviews that are to follow, I figured a partial review on my favorite place to buy books online would be appropriate to thin out what will surely be many an unjust review. Let's put aside that he's an embellisher in his memoirs (I could care less). Let's focus solely on the novel at hand. Let's start with the negatives.
  
  Two Teens runaway from home to start a life together. (Cliche)
  A blockbuster actor married to a beautiful woman is really gay. (Cliche)
  A spanish nanny with a deformity who starts a relationships with the son of a client. (Cliche)
  A homeless man who befriends a runaway. (Most assuredly cliche)
  The writing is shoddily punctuated, annoyingly incomplete, and choppy. (You look and have to make sure you read it right).
  The language is rough. (Constant swearing, difficult to read material)
  The vignette excursions are sometimes annoying, sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, sometimes a miss, and sometimes a hit. (Some worked in the book, other's probably could've been left out).
  
  Now I'll tell you why none of these negatives matter.
  
  The cliche story lines could kill a book if not so beautifully put together that you become engrossed in the characters--the characters become the originals in a story that's been told a thousand times.
  The writing is all his own. It's reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It flares with an immediacy not seen in books anymore--or rarely seen in books anymore. The excursions from the story are necessary because without them, you don't get the major character, which is, LA. LA rings as the focal character, a land and place all its own that rings true to the world around us, the focal point for the American dream, the focal point for hope and decadance, the focal point for stardom and fame, the focal point for what drives American's home lives to the television each day, the focal point for these characters existence, the focal point for life in a sense.
  
  I ask, and I hope, my only hope, that you who are angry at James Frey, let it go, and don't try and crush the book simply because you feel lied to. A believable lie, after all, is what good fiction is made out of, for if he could suspend disbelief well enough for us to believe everything in his memoir's (that he didn't even want to call memoirs, mind you, it's labeled, Memoir/Literature), he certainly suspends disbelief in bringing to life the characters. You will feel their pain and their defeats, their victories and their happines, at least to where I've read to. I don't know about the rest of the book... but he's never been one for the crapped out ending, so I'm quite sure. Buy it, you'll love it. If you don't buy it and you don't read it, then just don't write a review, for a review is not how you feel about the author, it's how you feel about the work he put out into the world, so be mature, grow up, and read a good book from a unique and new voice in the world of literature.
  
  

• Not for the squeamish!

  
  By A3P222CN9HAPTF on 2008-05-13
  The frontispiece of James Frey's latest book, "Bright Shiny Morning" carries the disclaimer: "Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable". Perhaps the author has learnt a lesson from the furore caused when his earlier book, "A Million Little Pieces", was exposed as partly fictional? (Sorry--embellished!) Perhaps he wishes to avoid being sued by those he defames in one or other of the various disparaging "facts" he presents in this book? Or perhaps he's merely messing with the heads of his readers by giving us his version of the "everything I say is a lie" paradox right at the outset? For this is a book that most decidedly does mess with the heads of its readers, big time.
  
  Ostensibly, the book is a presentation of the separate stories of many people, all unconnected in any way other than through the single fact of them living (if it can be called that) somewhere within the vastness of modern-day Los Angeles. Sometimes we are offered no more than a glimpse of these individuals--not even learning so much as their names--as some particular circumstance of their lives (or their deaths--for there are many of those--or their ruin--many of those too) is paraded before us. Each may appear across just a few pages; over only a paragraph or two; or even--and quite commonly--within nothing more than a single cryptic sentence. Over the 500 pages of this novel, we encounter vast numbers of these souls, each appearing like moths out of the darkness of the text, allowing us to glimpse briefly some small aspect of their shape, colour or form, before they are consumed, taken by the flame that draws them all; gone to their destiny or their doom (usually both the same thing). Some, only a carefully selected handful, we learn about in more detail and we are permitted to follow their particular stories in more depth, across the book as a whole, never sure whether they are also spiralling to their own inevitable destinies, or whether they might just escape in the end.
  
  The real protagonist of "Bright Shiny Morning" is not, however, to be found amongst the human lives that flit across the pages, hypnotised by the light. Rather it is the very light itself--the heaving throbbing soulless uncaring monster always a monster the monster light never gentle never kind just brutal brutal brutal that is Los Angeles, Los Angeles yeah--whose pounding pulse and irresistible pull is used to bind the reader to the book from opening to close. For the city is clearly the hero (or anti-hero) here, almost drawing a life of its own from the human lives it consumes with indifference day after day. And which is here lovingly and detestingly exposed down to every last dirty sordid intimate detail. The book is brutal--gut-wrenchingly, heart-rendingly so. But its racing roaring vibrant writing and commas who the f--- needs commas racing oh I said racing already fast-paced text does such a good job of interlacing the brutal but entirely believable fiction with equally brutal yet bizarre and barely believable fact--and at such a whirlwind pace--that you soon stop knowing what to believe and what to accept simply as story. Or indeed, what to laugh about and what to cry about. All you know is that you have to keep reading keep reading turning the pages over and over and over mustn't put it down...
  
  So. Buy it. Read it. Hate it. Love it. Cry when it's gone want more be thankful it's done. But buy it.
  
  

• A Million Bright Shiny Jokes

  
  By A7JV3D4T36KOP on 2008-05-13
  The beginning of James Frey's latest book, 'Bright Shiny Morning' carries the disclaimer: 'Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable'. That is only half the disclaimer that this book should contain. The rest should read: 'Nor should anything in this book be considered good literature or even competent sentence construction. Further under no circumstances should you feel conflicted about recognizing this for what it is yet more crap packaged to be something substantial. In reality it is yet another example of our Orwellian times."
  
  The deep visceral sense that we are all being hustled by some incredibly large and powerful dark force is the defining characteristic of the current age. In this case the vast hustler is our major institutions. When we were sold that an incompetent is legitimately the leader of the most powerful democracy on the planet then it's to be expected that Paris Hilton is considered a talent, inorganic chemical are considered food, reality television is considered entertainment, a preemptive war run on credit and no plan is a cause to rally behind, using one's house as an ATM will have no lasting consequence, health care is not, fair and balanced is exactly not, the No-spin Zone is nothing but spin, consumption is sound economic policy, The Clear Skies Initiative is a receipt for polluted skies, No Child Left Behind means no child moves forward and James Frey, a sub-mental, is considered a legitimate author.
  
  So was the whole Oprah-feeling-oh-so-betrayed just another cynical corporate stunt using a stooge that wouldn't know any better to dupe a scam-weary audience? I'd bet an million shrinking dollars on it.
  
  
  

• Witty, involving, deeply moving, hilarious, shocking, rewarding . . .

  
  By AMUSYYSZ6GR8W on 2008-05-13
  The book arrived Saturday morning, 500 pages! Saturday evening I thought I'd better make a start, I read a few of hours but must get some sleep. Sunday morning I pick it up again - Sunday lunch time I closed the book - phew! - is it finished so soon?
  
  It is a story and many stories - of the people of Los Angeles. Four major stories run at frequent intervals throughout the book, each centred on and individual or couple, they are self contained and never interconnect. In addition there are the stories of numerous other Los Angeles residents; some run to many pages while others might be covered in just a few, a paragraph or just a line. Finally there is the story of Los Angeles itself, facts, figures, events and stories about the city, which along with the four main stories runs throughout the book (although a disclaimer warns the reader not to trust anything in the book).
  
  The four main stories:
  
  Amberton and his wife have the perfect family; they are both film stars at the top of their profession, adored by all. But their happy marriage is a cover for they are both gay, and the arrangement provides cover which allows them to follow their inclinations in private. All is well until Amberton meets ex-football star Kevin, big, black and irresistible. Amberton is in love, but will the path of love be smooth?
  
  Esperanza is the only daughter of Mexican immigrants. She is intelligent, shy, and attractive, but she has big thighs. To finance her education she works as a cleaner for a wealthy but demanding and unappreciative widow. She has been chaste and not found true love, but when the wealthy widow's chubby and cheerful son returns home will Esperanza's fortune change?
  
  Dylan and Maddie are teenage runaways, seeking to make a new life for themselves having each escaped abusive parents. They are deeply in love, but is that enough to see them through all the trials before them?
  
  Joe is lives on the streets, or more precisely the floor of a washroom, his fellow tramps consider him wise, but he questions his lot in life.
  
  Altogether it makes for a most fascinating read. Interesting, witty, involving, funny, deeply moving, entertaining, hilarious, shocking, informative, sad, rewarding, enlightening; I was captivated from the start, and Mr Frey cleverly maintains interest with frequent cliff-hangers as each story unfolds and finally reaches is conclusion; sometimes the protagonists come out of their ordeals well, but not always. But more importantly he has created numerous interesting characters about whom we care. Combined with that his no-nonsense yet appealing prose, which ranges from a quick-fire delivery to more intimate passages, holds the readers attention from start to finish.
  
  I have enjoyed James Frey's previous efforts, but here he has really excelled himself. Perhaps it is because while being entertaining the book also makes the reader think and question: what really matters, what is of true value, why do some seem to have it all while others have nothing?- Highly recommended.
  
  

• Fool me once....

  
  By A1Z1S2KWKK6QV4 on 2008-05-14
  The fact that this "author" has the audacity to show his face in public again, much less write another work of fiction, is proof that we live in a time where there is no honor, that there are no conseqences for actions and everything is about making money. Wake up people. Don't give this man another dollar after what he did to us before. Same old lack of respect for the English language, same old sad sack characters, same old ploy to extract money from our pockets. With all the great literature available, why waste time with this?
  
  
• Hard to forgive;has he asked?
  By AY0KHG6JCL1JO on 2008-05-14
  As a person who's been through the darkness of addiction (I most certainly would be dead by now) and was given a new life by attending tne venable institution Mr. Frey wrote about, rather lied about, in A Million Pieces Little Pieces I would find it hard to read, much less believe anything this man writes. It was a personal and disgusting insult to the thousands of us in a lifelong recovery from alcohol and drug addiction.
  
  However, we've also learned everyone deserves a second chance. I got one or I wouldn't be writing this. Recovery is about admitting you have a problem and asking for forgiveness from those you have hurt in the past. Has Mr. Frey done this? Has he publicly appoligised to thousands of us and the institution he demeaned in Million Pieces? Does the Introduction to his new book have such a statement?
  
  If Mr. Frey can find it in his heart to do the right thing, I may read his book. If not I will pray for him.
  
  GREATFUL TO BE HERE
  
  
  
• Do you love to read?
  By AC9UCXAF6K99P on 2008-05-14
  If you do, read this book - read anything James Frey writes for that matter. If you are a reader, a lover of words, a lover of stories recanted, read James Frey's work. If twists and curves of the literary word excite you, read James Frey's work. If quirky characters, vivid descriptions that make you feel like you can smell the characters as well as picture them, read James Frey's work.
  
  If it makes you feel better to hate him, or it's beneath you to see the talent that he has decided to share with us, again, then don't. That is your loss.
  
  Thanks James, so glad you are back.
  
  
• Send a Message: Boycott This Book
  By A28SL65S5J39KD on 2008-05-19
  Plagiarism is a writer's deadliest sin, the literary equivalent of murder. As I writer myself, I would debase not only my readers, but also myself by stealing someone else's work or lying about a work that claims to be non-fiction. How James Frey got a publishing deal after his "Million Little Pieces" debacle is anyone's guess, but shame on you Harper for printing "Bright Shiny Morning."
  
  Many people argue that Frey's first book helped a lot of people. It doesn't matter. The fact is that Frey broke a sacred covenant between author and reader, something that he can never repair. Like Stephen Glass, and dozens before him, Frey should be consigned to never putting words on paper again.
  
  Send a message to publishers everywhere: boycott James Frey, the trash he writes, and the morally questionable publisher who continues to market his work.
  
  
• Not a scorned reader...
  By A2M76GK1RRK5QY on 2008-05-19
  Despite feeling duped the first time around by Mr. Frey, I'm not a scorned reader and had a go at "Bright Shiny Morning". I tore through this book just as fast as everyone else did who was able to review it so quickly following it's release, so make no mistake people, we do have a page turner here.
  
  While I recognize the main character as being LA herself, I didn't care about her. I was more interested in the 4 supporting stories. I was so caught in the grips of those stories that I actually found everything else in the book to be a distraction, the facts, the traffic, the gangs, the highways, etc...
  
  Every chapter relating to the 4 main stories end in a mini cliffhanger The irregularity of this book left me eager and impatiently wanting more! There is no rhythm or flow, it seems random and scattered, and kept me moving forward to see if these stories were revisited.
  
  We are introduced to so many different people and situations during the first half of the book I thought the author was suffering from ADD. In my opinion, any single one of the dozens we meet could be an independent stand-alone story that I would a happily indulge in.
  
  
  
• Who on earth can think for a moment this is actually god writing?!?
  By A17VAR36CPIH6 on 2008-05-27
  The problem with Frey is NOT that he's a liar, or made-up parts of his memoir. The problem with Frey IS that he's a talentless hack who speaks exclusively in cliches and acts like the most obvious truths are grand revelations he stumbled upon. The problem with Frey is that he can't construct a sentence at a basic fourth-grade level of competency. It bespeaks terrible things for our culture when something this shoddy, hackneyed, and utterly undistinguished is passed off as a creation of substance. If you actually enjoy reading, how can you possibly think this collection of diarrheal blather, which can't be bothered to punctuate itself, is anything other than a narcissistic mind babbling to itself?
  
  
• Had High Expectations
  By A1HWMWZGBUZHL8 on 2008-05-28
  I really couldn't wait to read this book. I am in the camp of people who thought Oprah gave James the shaft after A Million Little Pieces. That book, and My Friend Leonard, continue to be the two best books I have ever read, whether they were fiction or memoir, exaggeration or lies. I tend to believe there were basically some truths in that book, or he should have at least gotten kudos for making the reader feel his "imagined" pain. I just don't think it's possible to fake that emotion. But, back to the book.....
  
  So I am a little disappointed that I didn't enjoy Bright Shiny Morning. It was not his style of writing- I happen to love that part, missed punctuation and all, but the story itself. The four main characters were way too cliched. The bum, the closeted actor, the Mexican maid with the uptight Waspy boss, and the young lovers trying to make it. On top of that, he threw in way too many side characters- I think everyone got the point after the 10th or 12th one, that people go west to fulfill dreams, only to find it's really, really tough.
  
  The fun facts and lists drove me nuts and I finally just started skipping them after awhile.
  
  I just think if he had more time devoted to developing the main characters like he did with Leonard and Lilly in AMLP/ MFL, this book would have been a much better read. I will always remember at the end of MFL, crying my eyes out and being totally wrecked for a couple of days. And this book just didn't leave me caring that much about the main characters.
  
  
• Please make it stop.........
  By A32EQ40O7PBSP on 2008-07-05
  Sorry James......your endless rambling with no punctuation and bouncing back and forth between characters mixed in with history of los angeles gave me a splitting headache if you like reading this review with no punctuation or separating of ideas than you will love this book I think maybe James truly was a drug addict and maybe he relapsed while writing this i can find no other explanation for why anyone would enjoy reading an entire book in this format - I'm not kidding IT SUCKS
  
  
• Another Frey Masterpiece
  By A1OA65HXZIINHR on 2008-05-28
  It's no secret that I'm a long-time James Frey fan. Before he was O-famous, he and I emailed several times, and I'm privileged to have an autographed copy of A Million Little Pieces. I was excited when I learned he was coming out with a new novel, and pre-ordered it months ahead on Amazon.com.
  
  I knew I wasn't going to read another Little Pieces story, but having read the editor's description of the book before ordering, I wasn't sure what I was going to read. And now I know that the editor probably had a hard time describing this book because it is so unique that it almost defies description.
  
  Just like A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard, Bright Shiny Morning pulls you into its pages and won't let you go even after you've read every word. Frey does an excellent job in building characters you truly feel like you know, though you also come to understand you probably wouldn't even glance at them if you walked by them on the street, with the exception of the world famous actor. He tells many stories in this book - and though the characters of each story aren't connected, he manages to connect them through his ability to make you care about each individual. He uses the history of Los Angeles almost like "rest areas" between these stories -- he bounces back and forth between scenarios and characters and just when you can't wait to learn what happens next, he throws in new characters in smaller vignettes that have nothing to do with what you've already read, but just gives you more and more to savor and contemplate.
  
  Now I understand why his publishing house had such a difficult time describing this book. It sounds SO complicated and fractured, but trust me, it's not. It is a totally unique piece of fiction and another Frey masterpiece. It is probably unlike anything you've ever read before, and certainly unlike any of the ho-hum out-of-new-ideas-but-still-a-bestselling-author titles currently on the bestseller list. This book is currently #52 on Amazon's list, but it's definitely #1 on mine.
  
  Buy this book. I believe you'll probably still be able to buy a 1st Edition, 1st printing copy. Read it. Savor it. Then put it away. At some point in time James Frey is going to gain the acceptance and recognition from the literary world that he so deserves, and you're going to have a collector's item on your hands. Trust me on this one. The O-crap may have made him temporarily famous, but his unique writing style and storytelling are going to make him a Pulitzer Prize winner at some point. It's just a matter of time.
  
  
  
• A Good Beach Book
  By A31RSS76NL81BV on 2008-06-02
  Not great literature, but a reasonably entertaining page turner with a melange of interesting characters--some of whom seem very familiar since the depravity of the Hollywood/LA scene is not a very new concept. The chapters are relatively short and are interspersed with "facts" about the early development of Los Angeles and a myriad of facts about the characteristics of its inhabitants. These I could have done without since they detracted from the main plotlines and impressed me as simply filler.
  
  
• Boring, Lazy, Cliches
  By A38EDF17G8308G on 2008-06-07
  Well-typed fluff stuffed with facile bromides and super-cliched, stock characters. The good people are so Good they seem like Disney characters and the bad guy (Amberton, the closeted movie star--there's an easy target) is such a corrupt narcissist he's basically a robot. I think the factual entries about Los Angeles that the author intersperses throughout the book are supposed to be BOLD and COOL but to me they read like Wikipedia entries. I live in Los Angeles and learned nothing new about my city. No, I'm serious: not a single thing.
  
  Never read his other two books but I'd heard this guy was a great writer(notwithstanding his memoir/novel controversy). Never written one of these reviews before, THAT'S how much I disliked Bright Shiny Morning. Sorry.
  
  
• Pay for it with fake money
  By A347SM0LX07N5Q on 2008-07-05
  The fact is, he's not much of a writer. The prose is dull, a pastiche of other writers' styles and he never really internalizes any of them. The fictive part of the narrative is shallow and half conceived at best; the 'factual' part of the narrative (ala Dos Passos?) is represented as half digested factiods based on research that never goes beyond Wikipedia.
  
  Clearly, the book was published based on the potential of Mr. Frey's 15 minutes of fame under the premise that no publicity is bad publicity. If he weren't infamous already this novel would never have been published.
  
  
• Whose LA?
  By A3CKH0UQPTS4LE on 2008-07-12
  I have never written an amazon.com review before, and I had never planned to, but I just couldn't let this one slide past. As someone born and raised in LA, and actually a fourth generation Angeleno with family members stretching back to the 1880s in the city, I felt scandalized by James Frey's shallow, uninformed depiction of my hometown. Sure, he's read a few books on the subject and can give us some interesting factoid-type info. But if Frey had ever lived here for any length of time his book would have sounded much different.
  
  I love books on LA and actively seek them out. Sometimes the tone is just right: Ask the Dust, What Makes Sammy Run, and the recent Zeroville are just a few examples of books that truly "get" this town. All you have to do to understand Frey's perspective is look at his "See James Frey's Top Ten Books to Read About LA" on the amazon website... the list reads like he did some google search on "The Top Ten Books to Read About LA" and these are what came up, in google order. They're all good books, but there's no depth to the list. This is the most hackneyed, trite, tired list imaginable, and these are the books that informed Bright Shiny Morning's LA.
  
  I like Frey's writing style, but even still, to quote David Ulin from the LA Times, "Bright Shiny Morning is a terrible book." It is incredibly racist and snide, it is misinformed about gangs and crime (hey James: did you only read headlines or what?), it is arrogant and cruel in its treatment of people's hopes and dreams, it demonizes and stereotypes just about everyone, and worst of all its rendering of LA is devoid of any true sense of the city itself, it's streets, its crazy architecture, what it's like to actually spend time in all those different neighborhoods, the aliveness that the flamboyant variety of the city brings about. This is the 'big book about LA' I would expect from someone who grew up in Ohio and lives in New York. A view of LA from a distance, informed by too many bad movies and sensationalized news stories.
  
  The only part I liked in the book was the section on LA freeways, which I thought he nailed pretty well... but it begs the question: did he ever get off the freeway and have a look around?
  
  
• Great Book
  By AFH56BP15HY1V on 2008-05-17
  It's sad that the people giving this book only 1 Star are reviewing what they think of the author's past instead of the BOOK. It's a great read and I hope all the crazy Oprah people get a grip and judge the contents of his novel, not what happened in the past. He made a mistake. If you don't like what he did than don't buy the friggin book and leave the comments to the people that have actually bought and READ THE BOOK!!!!
  
  
• Unconstrained and unbound by the rules of English grammar
  By ASPJ8Z8WTPQEQ on 2008-05-24
  James Frey is a masterful storey teller. Unfortunately, he has a penchant for writing in an odd way, without regard for the rules of English grammar. His sentences without proper punctuation - commas to separate the phrases, and periods to separate the sentences - often grate upon a literary ear. English grammarians can easily experience deep shock after reading only two of his pages. But readers seem to like his style, and they clamor for his books.
  
  I was hoping that his English might have improved after writing two bestsellers. Alas, it hasn't. In "Bright Shiny Morning", sentences without the necessary commas and periods are in abundance: "Instead of using his real name he started using the name of his site the more it was printed and repeated the more it was recognized the more people came the more people wrote about him the better the stories he got." "Run-on" sentences can test a reader's patience: "He has a TV show a talk/reality show that's going to be on cable he hopes it will lead to roles in network shows, studio films, and eventually, the place he always wanted to be but never dreamed he would find via gossip the Internet and breaking stories, Broadway."
  
  The story is fascinating. The editor of this book could have done a better job. This book would have been lot more readable and enjoyable if only the author had adhered to the rules of English grammar.
  
  
  
• copping a lesser heart
  By A15P0E7IYRBXAX on 2008-06-04
  I'm an old broke-down bricklayer, former roughneck, roustabout, coal miner, ranchhand, short-order cook, so on, thirty-two years of sweat, dirt, whiskey, cigarettes, dope, women, dopey women, arrests six, seven, eight, I don't know, nothing serious, not very, brawls, here and there, in a dozen states, none in the last ten years, nine years. A few years ago, when he was getting big, just before the lovely fall, I picked up in the Cutchogue Free Library "A Million Little Pieces" and on the first page knew the dude was a fraud whether this was fiction or fact because no one, not even in Bruce Willis movie, is allowed on a plane in the condition he described. Even before 9-11 I was barred from getting on a plane merely because of a newly fat lip, whiskey aftershave and a little pleasant wobble to my step. That said, there was something hypnotic about his prose, irritatingly hypnotic, but hypnotic nonetheless even with every page fighting the urge to fling the book across the Cutchogue Free Library's reading room because a million little peeps were reading the same book and raving and I was reading it and losing my mind: Who believes this crock of bologna written without a whit of wit intelligence soul but hypnotic? I mean I like "Rocky IV," Bert Hirschfield ("Cindy on Fire"), Sidney Sheldon, Ernest Hemmingway, Fyodor Dostoevskii, William Davies ("Autobiography of a Super Tramp"), Lafcadio Hearn, the movies "Armageddon," "Independence Day," Sailor Ron," "Major League," "Petrified Forest," "Dark Victory," "It's Love I'm After," and "All About Eve," to say nothing of Eugene O'Neil, Isaac Babel, Joan Armatrading, The Bulgarian Woman's Choir, Art Tatum, the Village People, Cool and the Gang, The New Orleans Jazz Vipers and Johnny Paycheck. I like a lotta different stuff for a lotta different reasons, none learned, but I hated "A Million Little Pieces" and saw in it almost everything wrong with American Literature and Life and not in a good way, but hypnotic and I danced nineteen jigs when The Smoking Gun busted the creepy sap-at-heart who had the temeritrocity to claim Kerouac and Miller as antecedents, though I am, actually, descended from Noah, apparently.
  Fortunately, "Bright Shiny Morning" is not hypnotic. It is, let me be plain, pure garbage, page one to page you-can't-endure-no-more. Garbage garbage garbage. If you like this book, you are an idiot, and this is from a man who has watched "Armageddon" nine times and knows almost every line by loving heart. (A little bit of me is in every misfit portrayed, and we ne-er-do-anythings know in our hearts we could save the world, so long as we don't have to be part of it, unless our debts are forgiven and outstanding warrants forgotten...) I also can recite long passages from Thomas Otway, Oliver Goldsmith, W. B. Yeats, Helen Hunt H. J. K. "Husband Hopper" Jackson by heart.
  James Frey is a fraud, as is most of America, most of whom and which are the moral equivalent of the wife of a gangster. He traffics in clichés of perception and has nothing in his being but the desire to be something other than what he is, which explains his popularity.
  I'm tired. Frey deserves not even this.
  
  
  
• annoyed!
  By A2JU55J4KXAUYH on 2008-05-15
  I have not yet read this book, and that many people are angry with Mr. Frey, goes without saying. But please have the courtesy to the written word to at least read this book before you slam it.... It seems to me that most of the reviews(and a few are quite good) for this book by the people that have read it are glowing...... Just read the book before you pan it, you may hate it, but you have no right to an opinion about something that you have not read. I have not formed an opinion yet, but believe me when I say, that I will, only after I have read it. Come on... Don't be lazy.
  
  
• A brilliant character study - of a city.
  By A3JQ8HR452J13K on 2008-05-27
  500 pages in two sittings. I opened the book and was immersed in an utterly amazing character study, not of a person, but of a place, a city, a metropolis so vast and varied and unforgiving. A place of dreams and disasters. Of beauty an inch deep and a mile wide. Frey's depiction of L.A. is a masterpiece. But is it really a work of fiction?
  
  
• 500 Pages Without Much Substance
  By A2KIVODZRTGY4U on 2008-08-06
  Bright Shiny Morning is a chaotic snapshot of L.A. It's like a music video but without the music or the video. Fictional vignettes, sometimes entertaining though more often predictable and trite, are jumbled with more mundane elements like lists of `fun facts' about L.A., descriptions of highways, historical events, and other minutiae. The book goes something like this: vignette about two in-love teenagers coming to L.A. to escape their abusive parents--cut to a list of the names of all the gangs in L.A.--cut to a one-page snippet about an aspiring actress promised a job in exchange for sex--cut to a three-sentence description of L.A. bank robberies in 1895--cut to a vignette about a self-absorbed movie superstar and his problems with his boyfriends--cut to a dull recitation of all the natural disasters that have ever hit L.A. In Bright Shiny Morning, nothing is sustained and nothing lasts. At times, Frey's quick-paced prose is a refreshing break from the more mundane aspects of this novel, but he indulges too often in repetition. A couple typical examples:
  
  The children thought she was crazy, they were all still scared of him. He seemed bigger every day. He was bigger every day.
  
  Every night before he went to sleep he lay in bed and dreamed, lay in bed and dreamed.
  
  I suspect Frey is trying to add a certain weightiness with this repetition, but I found it to be an annoying affectation, especially after seeing it on almost every page. Although Frey succeeds in capturing the frenetic and ephemeral aspects of modern L.A., I was left feeling this is a 500-page book with nothing in it that's real or important.
  
  
• A page turner in need of an editor.
  By A2FSFRNOZ5G1XM on 2008-05-17
  I succumbed to Maslin's breathless review and ordered my copy a few days ago. Though the book isn't quite worthy of her rave, it's still an entertaining collection of serialized stories--I began in the afternoon and didn't stop until I finished early the next morning.
  
  That said, there are many poorly considered style elements that keep the book from carrying any serious weight, and I don't mean Frey's punctuation or random lists of facts. Having not read his other work, I don't know if this is always the case, but he "dumbs things down" to a ridiculous degree. For instance, he gives parenthetical definitions of many words some readers may not know (e.g. vicuna). This is what dictionaries are for. He also makes frequent errors like describing a celebrity's suit as "custom-made" instead of "bespoke". Though these may not seem worth mentioning, when they appear on nearly every page the result can be infuriating. They kept me from taking the social commentary seriously (unlike, say, Bonfire of the Vanities).
  
  Despite these caveats, if you're like me and haven't had a good read for a while, this will probably do it for you. Just don't let the Times' review inflate your expectations.
  
  
  
• Flashes of brilliance
  By A2MRM4RSXL59DX on 2008-05-21
  It's not surprising that there are such divergent opinions of this book - it's very much in keeping with the uneven nature of the novel itself. For all its flaws - and they are numerous (incoherent, almost non-existent plot; wooden secondary characters; self-indulgent sidebars) - Frey should be applauded for his ambition and what he does so well: create compelling storylines and interesting settings, as well as interesting personalities on which to train his narrative.
  
  That he is able to make this disjointed mishmash compelling says a lot about his writing. Now he just needs to work on creating a whole, consistent work. Still, very much worth the read.
  
  
• Compulsively readable
  By A12HCT9Y8SMD3 on 2008-05-21
  Frey has developed a writing style that mimics the way the millennium brain process information. Think it's easy to do? Check out Janet Maslin's May 12 New York Times review of this book, which tries to be cute by imitating Frey's style but ends up reading like badly translated Russian song lyrics. In the tradition of Woolf, Stein and Kerouac, Frey brings us a up-to-the-minute voice that reflects this high definition dominated, Myspace conquered, interactive experience called the twenty first century. The language is sparse yet beautiful. The stories are compelling. Frey resists tying the sub plots together in some unlikely and contrived plot twist at the climax of the novel and instead allows the city to be the only link between these varied characters. The 501 pages go by quickly because the writing pushes you forward. The four parallel stories create a tension that compels you to turn the page, to say to your self, "just one more chapter" until finally you look up and realize your lunch hour was over fifty minutes ago. This is a really good novel that does what the best fiction should do - entertains, takes you away, encourages you to think.
  P.S. The Amberton sub plot is especially enjoyable if you envision Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in the title roles. Of course, this is a work of fiction, so the characters are absolutely, totally, 100% not based on them but ...
  
  
  
• Brilliant and Sad
  By A1VKEA13LW391Q on 2008-05-31
  As someone who has called LA home for more than 15 years now (time flies), I have to say that James Frey's newest tome really manages to hit the nail on the head about what draws people to Los Angeles, and what manages to alienate its residents all from one another.
  
  From character to character, Frey has created a dramatis personae that incredibly endears you to them but manages to push you away from them, as well.
  
  While its size is overwhelming at first, the read is fiercely fast...just when you get settled into a storyline and predict where it's going, you're accosted with a new name, a new face, a new dilemma.
  
  You won't love it -- as any piece of art, it will have its detractors.
  
  But it will stay with you -- and it situates Los Angeles as a place more than just filled with pixie dust, the shallow and [...] implants.
  
  Unlike the faux preaching of 2006's CRASH, BRIGHT SHINY MORNING has something that will stay with you. It feels more honest, less cliched and the air of desperation that lives within so many of the characters will be sadly relatable to many -- even those not living in the City of Angels.
  
  
• Last on my list
  By A2KYE3WE5IW8TH on 2008-06-02
  I have read quite a few very good books lately. I have even read a few great books in the last year. But this one falls on the bottom of my list. I only finished it because I desperately wanted to know what happened with the characters. Grammatically, this book drove me crazy. Each section is not relevant to the next. It reads like a high school boy's journal. My distinct impression is that Frey attempted to write a poetic novel.
  
  The book was very sad, and there wasn't much bright or shiny about it. He does not tie up many of the loose ends. He does, however, create lovable characters and real trauma.
  
  In a nutshell, It's not horrible, but I regret paying hardcover pricing for it.
  
  
• Both Brilliant and Frustrating
  By A1Y9RANPT9OD1I on 2008-06-09
  This novel is a real mixed bag. Juvenile, cliched and unoriginal- yet it creeps in under your skin and you can't help but be hooked. Just read it- everyone is going to have a different opinion and you won't have yours until you do.
  
  
• James Frey is a master storyteller
  By AK5XU8G9IHWBH on 2008-06-24
  I want to preface this review by saying that I am one of those people who couldn't care less if James Frey or his publishers (or whomever) called his first book, A Million Little Pieces, a memoir. The fact that is was a great piece of literature -- terrific story, great writing, and a truly compelling read -- is all that should matter at the end of the day. His next book, My Friend Leonard, was at least as good, if not better, and more than proved that James Frey was not a one-hit-wonder.
  
  With that being said, I now want to gush about Bright Shiny Morning. No, it's not the least bit uplifting and it covers dark topics that many of us wish we could ignore. BUT...but the story is so well-told that you won't be able to put the book down...you will want to know what happens to each character, and why. You will be so instantly engrossed that even the unbelievably breathtaking views of the Caribbean will not cause you to lift your head up from the pages of this book. At least that was my experience.
  
  READ IT! Then share with others. You won't be sorry.
  
  

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