Frey, memoir, addiction, and truth

the_red_shoes wrote a exhaustive post on the controversy over the pretentious and very possibly less-than-factual A Million Little Pieces in which, from her perspective as a recovering addict, she enumerated each moment that didn't ring true; many of them minor individually, but devastating in total.

There is a lot of great discussion going on in the comments, over the relative truthfulness of memoir vs. fiction, the experience of addiction and recovery, and other addiction memoirs. I have several comments that discuss the process of writing All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, where and why I decided to alter the exact facts as I recalled them, and why I think that doesn't make the book fictional.

Frey, memoir, addiction, and truth

the_red_shoes wrote a exhaustive post on the controversy over the pretentious and very possibly less-than-factual A Million Little Pieces in which, from her perspective as a recovering addict, she enumerated each moment that didn't ring true; many of them minor individually, but devastating in total.

There is a lot of great discussion going on in the comments, over the relative truthfulness of memoir vs. fiction, the experience of addiction and recovery, and other addiction memoirs. I have several comments that discuss the process of writing All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, where and why I decided to alter the exact facts as I recalled them, and why I think that doesn't make the book fictional.