Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2008
512 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
"I expect, given the sharpness of the knives that some critics have out for Frey, that many will say the book flat out doesn't work ... Yet the guy has something: an energy, a drive, a relentlessness, maybe, that can pull readers along, past the voice, past the stock characters, past the clichés. Bright Shiny Morning is a train wreck of a novel, but it's un-put-downable, a real page-turner - in what may come to be known as the Frey tradition." - Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly.
"As it stands, Morning is like L.A. at its worst: undone by ambition, sprawl, and (verbal) smog. Not to mention a glib resistance to hard work. D+" - Entertainment Weekly.
"The million little pieces guy was called James Frey. He got a second act. He got another chance. Look what he did with it. He stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park. No more lying, no more melodrama, still run-on sentences still funny punctuation but so what. He became a furiously good storyteller this time." - New York Times, Janet Maslin.
"Bright Shiny Morning is a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read. But you have to give James Frey credit for one thing: He's got chutzpah." - Los Angeles Times.
This information about Bright Shiny Morning was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo © Michael Foley
James Frey is originally from Cleveland. He is the author of A Million Little Pieces, My Friend Leonard, Bright Shiny Morning, and The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, all international bestsellers. He has sold more than 20 million books and his work is published in forty-two languages.
Author Interview
Link to James Frey's Website
Name Pronunciation
James Frey: fry
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