A shiny simple story

James Frey

James Frey's new novel is once again a mix of fact and fiction.

To be a good fiction writer, maybe you do need to be a liar. James Frey, who first wowed his country (the USA) with his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, and then was hounded for lying in it, is back, this time writing fiction.

The book, Bright Shiny Morning starts with an almost ironic nod to Frey's dark lying past, with a disclaimer: "Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable." But, like in his memoir, Frey in this book too plays with mixing reality and fiction without ever letting on which is which.

Take for example one of the characters that he only describes but never names, who makes not only a living by peddling gossip on his website but becomes almost as famous as the people he writes about.

For those who follow these things, that character is clearly Hollywood's number one gossip columnist, Perez Hilton, whose website of the same name gets an incredible amount of hits everyday and is very much a product of the city of Los Angeles, where the book is based.

Frey's book is already a bestseller in the US but has irked the Los Angeles Times book editor who has called it shallow. But that the book manages to engage the reader who may not have any affinity to the city of Los Angeles is a decent start.

Frey hasn't written a literary classic but a book that brings alive the lives of his assembled cast of characters who may be stereotypical but whose stories are well told.

Esperanza, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant couple, works for a while as a maid for a mean but rich Mrs Campbell even as her parents, both illiterate, dream the American dream and hope that their daughter gets an education and thereby a different life from them, is a character whose story you want to hear.

Is it just so clichéd that the only Mexican-American character in the book is doomed to work as a maid? Maybe, but really, who cares, for you do look forward to reading about what happens to her next and then next and so on.

Then there is Amberton Parker whose life is literally picture-perfect. He is the scion of a Midwestern meatpacking family. He gets an education at Harvard and then goes on to make a sensational debut in a Broadway play and soon after becomes a mega Hollywood movie star.

But he and his beautiful family (he is married to Casey, an actress, and they have children) are hiding a secret that as the plot unravels comes to bite Parker. Another cliché? Again, who cares. As anyone (and we all do in varying degrees) who opens a gossip rag to read about the lives of film stars, demi-gods of our times, in all their salacious splendour, does so to peep into lifestyles that they know are as dirty as they are beautiful, yet it is entrancing.

Parker's story gets the reader to turn pages swiftly to know what happens next. We never know why Parker has this side to him but this basic plotline that doesn't bother to explore the underlying reasons is enough, for there are other stories to follow.

Frey keeps the momentum of the novel going by taking us through the lives of characters that he feels are typical of LA, a city that has all the glitz and the glamour as well as the seedy underbelly that is becoming the hallmark of any big metropolis anywhere in the world. He doesn't allow space for complexities but that doesn't deter from the enjoyment that the novel offers.

For a dyed-in-the-wool LA resident the book may seem too simplistic, drawing only on the obvious, but that is the problem that dogs much contemporary fiction writing today. For a true-blue Mumbaikar, Shantaram, the memoir mixed with fiction that received accolades worldwide and will soon be made into a motion picture, would evoke the same reaction.

Short-term residents, like Frey was to LA or Mumbai was to Gregory David Roberts, the writer of Shantaram, will probably never understand the soul of these iconic cities, but they still are able to churn out page-turners and more so when the novel is a mix of fiction and non-fiction.

Frey's Bright Shiny Morning isn't a masterpiece but it isn't a book that should be overlooked either. Frey tells simple stories in this novel simply and sometimes that is good enough.

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BRIGHT SHINY MORNING

Author:

James Frey
Publisher: HarperCollins
PAGES: 502
Price: Rs 900