It's against the rules to
judge a book by its cover, but in the case of James Frey's debut novel, Bright
Shiny Morning,
it might be worth making an exception. The blurb on the inside cover struggles
to exploit Frey's fame without explicitly referencing the uproar surrounding
his debunked "memoir," A Million Little Pieces; the phrases "strikingly
powerful" and "tour de force" are thrown around with wild abandon, and Frey is
described as "one of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America."
Obviously criticizing a novel or its author because of an overzealous
copywriter is unfair, but the desperate push for literary greatness mirrors the
central flaw of Morning's well-intentioned but top-heavy core: Its modest charms
collapse under the weight of its pretensions.
An attempt to capture the
city of Los Angeles in prose, Morning follows four storylines whose only connection is
their primary location. A young couple flees to L.A. to escape abusive parents
and small-town life, a publicly closeted movie star uses his power to stalk and
seduce the current object of his obsession, the American daughter of illegal
Mexican immigrants tries to overcome body issues to find happiness, and a
homeless drunk does his best to protect a teenage meth addict from her demons
and some guys with guns. Between these stories, Frey interjects bits of L.A.'s
history and descriptions of its culture, including such diverse topics as gun
control, city design, and the way Hollywood has a (gasp) dark side.
There's no particular
rhyme or reason to the interjections, which means they have no cumulative
effect; Morning reads
like the bastard child of a short-story collection and an almanac. But the
child does have its moments. The sections focusing on the movie star are Harold
Robbins lite, but the other main plots range from competent to engrossing,
particularly the story of Old Man Joe, the hobo with a predilection for
Chablis. With a little polish, Joe's adventures would've made a fine vignette,
but Frey expects it, and the tales that surround it, to have some kind of
larger purpose that they simply can't manage. At best, Morning's digressions are mildly
amusing. At worst, they're self-indulgent white noise. If Frey wants to get
past the scandal currently haunting his career, he needs to learn how to
construct a novel before he starts trying to re-invent it.