Website shatters writer's claims into little pieces

Only Harry Potter sold more books last year than James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, but was the American's memoir of alcohol and drug-induced mayhem as much fantasy as the boy wizard himself?

Frey's book sold 1.77 million copies last year after being chosen by Oprah Winfrey's book club in September, but one investigative website now says his book was based on lies.

The book's publisher, Random House's Doubleday division, stood by the author and declined to make Frey available for interview. But on his personal website bigjimindustries.com he called the article "the latest attempt to discredit me".

"So let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won't dignify this bullshit with any sort of further response," Frey wrote.

The Man Who Conned Oprah, was the headline on The Smoking Gun website, a news site owned by Court TV. The article on Frey charges he fabricated serving a prison sentence, exaggerated his role in an FBI investigation and lied about his status as an outlaw "wanted in three states", among other things.

"I was a bad guy," Frey told Winfrey in a television broadcast last October which made him a literary sensation.

"If I was gonna write a book that was true, and I was gonna write a book that was honest, then I was gonna have to write about myself in very, very negative ways."

But The Smoking Gun says: "He has demonstrably fabricated key parts of the book, which could - and probably should - cause a discerning reader ... to wonder what is true in A Million Little Pieces and its sequel, My Friend Leonard."

Central to Frey's book, published in 2003, is his assertion that he was charged with assaulting a police officer in Ohio with his car, with inciting a riot, with possession of crack cocaine and felony drunk driving - charges that, he wrote, resulted in him serving a three-month prison term.

But Smoking Gun editor William Bastone said: "The overall majority of contentions he makes in the book are not borne out by contemporaneous police records or by interviews we conducted with police and court officials in Ohio and Michigan."

- REUTERS