A Million Little Pieces in the gas station
On Sunday, I pulled into a gas station. After cursing about the latest five cents price hike for petrol, I walked into the store to pay. There was a teenage girl behind the counter and she was clutching a copy of A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. She was reading intently as I approached and barely looked up as I passed over my money.
“Are you enjoying the book?,” I asked, immediately recognising the cover.
“Yeah, it’s about a recovering alcoholic and junkie who’s in rehab,” she said.
She was back to her reading before the change reached my hand. The girl had folded over the pages she had completed so she could easily hold the book in one hand while conducting the gas transactions with the other. I could have given her monopoly money and she wouldn’t have noticed.
I was going to make a smart alec remark - something like…”You know it’s a fake memoir by some bloke who made up large amounts of the story.” But she was so intensely involved with the book that I just couldn’t.