A million little pieces

So my mother leaves me a voice mail telling me Oprah's newest selection for her book club. Says she thought of me because Oprah said she couldn't put it down even though it was a little outside the box for her. I buy it on a whim. The Universe has put it in my path for a reason, methinks.

So I'm reading it now. The print is tiny, so it's deceptively long. I'm 75 pages in. It's called A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. It's remarkable and excruciating and so raw. Almost too raw. It's a memoir about his six weeks in rehab. I know what Oprah means -- it's definitely outside the box for me, too. It's like watching a car accident; you want to look away but you are also so drawn to it.

I just finished a chapter about his visit to the dentist, getting a root canal without anesthesia because of his addiction: I start to fade into a state of white consciousness where I am no longer directly connected to what is being done to me ... There is white. Everywhere there is white. There is agony. It is agony that is unfathomable ...

It's hard enough just to read about it.