Customer Reviews
Not one for the LA tourist board - By: Reesy, 22 Sep 2008 
A very powerful book, writtenin the characteristic James Frey style that I lovedin 'A million little pieces' (despite the controversy it's still a great book). A mind-boggling array of characters & stories that I couldn't stop reading about. The 'happy' stories are writtenin the same matter-of-fact style as the 'bad' stories which makes the book all the more powerful. Mr Frey does tend to enjoy looking at the darkest, most extreme aspects of human nature though, left me never wanting to visit LA!
No credibility - By: C. Bailes, 01 Sep 2008 
Unfortunately for me Frey no longer has any credibility, style or authenticity. This book could have been written by anyone who has watched too many TV documentaries.
Disappointing - By: MaryAnne, 16 Aug 2008 
Having loved A Million Little Pieces, I approached this book with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately it did not entertain mein the same way.
So many different characters were introduced, a short chapter each, & then they disappearedin favour of yet more characters. Occasionally we returned to a familiar name & went further with them but I found myself wondering with each page turn whether it would be yet again someone new.
When I hit a lenghty section on the history & geography of the Los Angeles road network I finally gave up.
The informative brief clips on the development of the state of LA from early times were mildly interesting but to a greater extent were interruptions to the flow(?) of the narrative.
I hate to be beaten by a book & I may return & give it another tryin a few months, but for now I fear it's only 3 stars.
City Of Blinding Lights - By: Mr. S. O'kane, 04 Aug 2008 
From what I've read elsewhere James Frey has already cut an infamous figurein literary circles with his debut book 'A Million Little Pieces'. Purported - at first - to be a personal memoir of his past, it was later exposed by the media as pure fiction instead. Cue huge public outrage & a public dressing down & humiliation on the Oprah Winfrey show. To be honest, I'd not heard a single word about all of this before I began this novel & I'm glad I didn't: 'Bright Shiny Morning' is absolutely brilliant regardless of any reputation Frey has.
This novel isn't easy to describe. There are 4 main plots & these are mixedin with either brief snapshots of other minor denizens of LA or various bits of trivia about the city today (for example a list of the innumerate murderous gangs that roam its streets). Every breakin the book is punctuated with eventsin the history of the cityin the form of a single paragraph on a single page. Like the city itself, the novel is a sprawling mix of these strands but it never complicates itself by twisting them all together. The brief snippets of history & one off stories here & there allow the 4 main plots to breathe independently.
I thoroughly enjoyed this innovative book from cover to cover. Aside from the book's wonderful structure, the 4 main stories reflect the best known aspects of LA (& America today) very well: the rich & famous, the down & out, the migrant worker & kidsin search of the American Dream. I often did wonder amidst the bulk of the novel if some of the shorter ones would be expanded later on or somehow clash with the bigger stories but, on reflection now, I'm glad they didn't. Such is the vastness of LA's varied populace, perhaps leaving out other individual voices meant some parts had to stand alone (beguilingly)in the way they did. The novel is really is a such a huge, delicious yet terrifying mix of ideas & one started to sense that the lead character wasn't someone from the 4 main stories, but Los Angeles itself.
This is my novel of the year so far. By a country mile. A modern masterpiece.
Unreadable rubbish - By: A. Moore, 18 Jul 2008 This book was so badly written, I couldn't even get past the character introductions.
I have happily read books by Burroughs, Henry Miller & Dostoevsky, so I'm not lackingin the intelligence to read 'difficult' books. You must have to drink the Kool-aid to believe this is a good book, when it's simply hard to read due to the author's lack of writing ability.
