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| Bright Shiny Morning | 
 enlarge | Author: James Frey
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy Used: $6.05
You Save: $20.90 (78%)
New (64) Used (57) Collectible (10) from $6.05
Avg. Customer Rating:  132 reviews
Sales Rank: 3981
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.7
ISBN: 0061573132
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780061573132
ASIN: 0061573132
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Former library book. Professionally covered in plastic for long life. Tight binding.
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Product Description
One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers his first novel—a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original. Dozens of characters pass across the reader's sight lines—some never to be seen again—but James Frey lingers on a handful of LA's lost souls and captures the dramatic narrative of their lives: a bright, ambitious young Mexican-American woman who allows her future to be undone by a moment of searing humiliation; a supremely narcissistic action-movie star whose passion for the unattainable object of his affection nearly destroys him; a couple, both nineteen years old, who flee their suffocating hometown and struggle to survive on the fringes of the great city; and an aging Venice Beach alcoholic whose life is turned upside down when a meth-addled teenage girl shows up half-dead outside the restroom he calls home. Throughout this strikingly powerful novel there is the relentless drumbeat of the millions of other stories that, taken as a whole, describe a city, a culture, and an age. A dazzling tour de force, Bright Shiny Morning illuminates the joys, horrors, and unexpected fortunes of life and death in Los Angeles.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 127 more reviews...
 My Hope May 14, 2008
171 out of 200 found this review helpful
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! May 13, 2008
41 out of 68 found this review helpful
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 May 13, 2008
29 out of 90 found this review helpful
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 . . . May 13, 2008
25 out of 37 found this review helpful
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.... May 14, 2008
22 out of 136 found this review helpful
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?
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