Roman Clodia's Reviews > Katerina

So, I'm one of the few people seemingly who hasn't read Frey's A Million Little Pieces (and, frankly, am not particularly bothered about the porousness between fiction and memoir that made it so controversial): so I came to this book 'cold' as it were. Frey's prose is furiously energetic, even frenetic, words falling over themselves, no commas, abandoned grammar in their rush, and often repetitive. I'd say this is a book that is all about its style: if you hate this kind of fevered near-monologue, quasi-stream of consciousness writing then it's unlikely that the underlying story will compensate and win you over.

The story - hmm: a middle-aged American writer has a mid-life crisis, recalls a blistering love affair in Paris in his youth (sex, drugs, more sex, alcohol, art, French bread, yet more sex, every woman he meets wears a thong and is happy to have insta-sex, drugs, booze, Left Bank reading - you get the picture) then finally gets closure in a schmaltzy, OTT, pseudo-heart-rending, chic lit of an ending.

The sex is repetitive, male-fantasy sex; the influences are part Hemingway, part Henry Miller, part F. Scott Fitzgerald, all youthful Parisian illusions followed by adult American disillusion. Jay contrasts his sell-out 'now' life with all the big dreams he had when he was younger, tangled up with his one great love, one great heartbreak.

The thing about this book is that it's easy to tear it apart *and yet* it has *something* that made me keep reading. It captures a visceral sense of crazy love, all extremes and forget-the-world, veering from the heights of ecstasy to suicidal despair in the space of walking through a door.

This is a fast read as the prose hurtles us through the story: while my head rebelled, there is an undeniable intensity and fizzing energy about the prose. Best switch off your critical faculties for this one and throw yourself into the tumult of emotion. That ending, though...