My Friend Leonard

Starred review from March 28, 2005
Frey achieves another stylistic coup as he develops a narrative thread begun in 2003's A Million Little Pieces
. He chronicles his journey out of the terrifying darkness of addiction, and the friend he meets along the way, Leonard. A gangster, raconteur and mentor, Leonard was introduced in Pieces
as one of Frey's new rehab friends. Here, he pushes Frey out into the world, pampering him one moment, giving him tough love the next. As in Pieces
, Frey's style throughout is loose, untraditional yet perfectly crafted: " offered me his hand and said good, I'm fucked up too, and I like fucked-up people, let's sit and eat and see if we can be friends. I took his hand and I shook it and we sat down and we ate together and we became friends." There's something mesmerizing about the endless tumble of words, the nonstop spilling out of Frey's troubles and triumphs. In the hands of a less capable writer, all of this cool, tight narration might numb the reader and distance the experience. Instead, this book packs a full-body emotional wallop. Frey's eye is keen for detail: the inside of a county lockup; the flat, gray Chicago winter; an out-of-control Super Bowl party in Los Angeles; the grind of living day to day—all come alive in his sparse, powerful prose. At its core, this is an examination of a friendship. Frey's extraordinary relationship with Leonard is alive, a flesh-and-blood bond forged in the agony of rehab and sustained through honesty and trust. Agent, Kassie Evashevski at Brillstein/Grey Entertainment.

April 15, 2005
In this follow-up to his best-selling "A Million Little Pieces", which described his near-fatal descent into addiction, Frey gets out of jail and embarks on a mission to live a drug- and alcohol-free life with his new girlfriend, Lilly. Before he can reach her, however, she hangs herself over the death of her grandmother. Enter Leonard, a "father figure" mobster Frey met in rehab who gives him highly lucrative (albeit highly illegal) work, indulges him in lavish feasts and parties, and simply teaches him how to enjoy life to the fullest -without illegal substances and booze. While this memoir addresses serious issues that would ostensibly interest readers (love and loss, suicide, sexual orientation, AIDS, and criminal activity), Frey's writing style utterly fails to engage. There is no distinction between one voice and the next, which makes it difficult to tell who is speaking; the lack of sentence variation and punctuation makes for a monotone narrative so that potentially exciting or emotional events have little impact. Even the most tenacious fans of Frey's more successful first book will have trouble plowing through to the end. Not a first purchase, but prepare for demand. -Dale Raben, "School Library Journal"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2005
Frey's first memoir, " A Million Little Pieces" (2003), chronicled his stint in rehab at age 23 after years of drug and alcohol addiction. That struggle continues in his follow-up, which opens at the end of Frey's three-month jail sentence. Upon release, Frey was hopeful: he was headed to Chicago to join the woman he fell in love with in rehab, Lilly, and start a new life. But devastating news awaited him in Chicago, and Frey found himself tempted to march into the nearest bar. He bought a bottle of cheap wine, which he managed not to open, and turned to his friend Leonard, a charming, gentlemanly mobster whom Frey met in rehab. Leonard thought of Frey as his son and was willing to do anything to help him. Leonard gave Frey a questionable but lucrative job delivering packages, and encouraged and bolstered Frey, until a personal secret caused Leonard to withdraw from his friends and associates. Never one to mince words, Frey lays bare even his most private and personal musings, making this a raw, often visceral, reading experience. With Frey's emotions so close to the surface, it's impossible not to care about Frey's struggles to reintegrate into society and prosper. Another powerful read from a talented, dynamic author.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)