Corny, clichéd, lazy — James Frey's eat-the-rich novel is cynical tosh

Times

6 hours ago

James Frey boasts that it took him a mere 57 days to write Next to Heaven, a trashy murder-mystery set among the bored ultra-rich in Connecticut. This I can believe. There are books that gain a kinetic force from being composed in a feverish sprint and then there are books where you wonder if some hapless editor has sent the wrong draft to the printer.
Next to Heaven feels less like a novel than notes for a novel, prompts even, almost as if Frey tossed together a few reference points — Bret Easton Ellis, Jackie Collins,Couples by John Updike — and asked a a certain large-language model to come up with the goods, although he swears blind he didn't use AI to write it. OK, he conceded to Vanity Fair magazine that he used ChatGPT to help with brand names; and it's impossible to avoid Google's AI these days. But on the creativity point he defended his integrity emphatically: 'I don't use generative AI to write ever, just so we're clear,' he said. I suppose we'll just have to take the author of A Million Little Pieces (2003) at his word.
It's just that it reads almost uncannily like a cynical remix of any number of super-rich satires or thrillers we've been treated to in recent years. Like Liane Moriarty's novel Big Little Lies, the story is set in a 'picture perfect' small town. It features a gossipy Greek chorus narration and a heavily foreshadowed murder. There are frustrated cops, themes of domestic abuse and rape and an unlikely sisterhood, which given the tone of Frey's previous book, Katerina ('Cum inside me. Cum inside me. Cum inside me'), seems unlikely to have been born from any native feminist instinct.
Then, like the recent TV drama Your Friends and Neighbors starring Jon Hamm, it features a Connecticut fund manager who gets fired, can't bring himself to tell his family and maintains his lavish lifestyle by pinching Patek Philippe watches from his neighbours.
But, whatever. Aren't all these eat-the-rich stories about sex, divorce and murder merging into one anyway? And isn't shamelessness the quality Frey, 55, is best known for? He claims he dreamt of becoming 'the most controversial writer on the planet' — not the best, the most controversial.
He shot to fame after his drugs memoir A Million Little Pieces was championed by Oprah Winfrey. It then emerged that he had invented large chunks of it. It brought controversy, a South Park parody, millions of sales and precisely zero contrition (as one of the characters in Next to Heaven thinks after she has duped everyone: 'Hahaha. It worked. Hahaha. Hahaha.')
'I grew up with a f*** you attitude,' this maverick has said in interviews, a phrase he puts in the mouth of many of his risk-taking, self-destructive characters. Katerina (2018) won a bad sex award and was described by one critic as 'an impressive attempt at career suicide'. And yet Frey seems to have failed even in this attempt because here he still is.
Next to Heaven centres on a drug-fuelled sex party dreamt up by Devon and Belle, the richest two wives in chichi New Bethlehem (a name taken from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood). Devon, an art dealer who comes from old money, is looking to escape her marriage of convenience to Billy, a sadistic bitcoin billionaire with a portrait of Eric Trump on the wall. Belle, who hails from a family of rich criminals in Texas, lives in a property that's 'staffed the f*** up' with nannies, housekeepers and stable hands. Her gentle husband, Teddy, is impotent — unable to achieve 'a coconut-cream explosion'.
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Devon craves sex with Alex, a former NFL quarterback who has lost his banking job but hasn't told his wholesome wife, Grace. Meanwhile, Belle wants to bed Charlie, a hockey coach, who is dating Katy, a maths teacher with a tragic backstory. All the women are beautiful with olive skin. Devon's beloved housekeeper, Ana, has particularly beautiful olive skin and must sleep with her boss to send money back to her husband and child in Costa Rica. So all the ingredients are here for another titillating tale of rape and retribution among the 1-per-centers complete with Chanel dresses, Boca do Lobo sofas, limited-edition Yeezys, Ode à la Rose orchids, Roche Bobois chairs etc.
Next to Heaven confirms that Frey is a very, very lazy writer. His sentences read like schoolboy attempts at hardboiled style — 'He had it all. And he had always had it all' — and contain some of the corniest lines I've read in fiction ('promises are like glass and they break just as easily'). Then there are the parts where he takes flight: 'Oh the night! Oh the dark! Where promises are made and kisses exchanged, where secrets are born and shared, where hearts entwine and passions ignite.' Frey doesn't let editors touch a word of his — this I can also believe.
What's particularly strange, given that he's such a 'bad boy', is that he completely fluffs the wife-swapping soirée. After one paragraph in which the men all size each other up, the characters slope off to have very tame (or depressing) heterosexual intercourse. James, goddammit, it's an orgy! He takes more care describing the party invitations.
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For a book about bad behaviour, the characters behave in remarkably boring and predictable ways. They have no foibles or contradictions. No one in the novel feels remotely real. The characters are dead, the language is dead and it says terrible things about publishing that this ever saw the light of day. It's also coming to a TV near you because Frey sold the screen rights before the manuscript — 'Hahaha. It worked. Hahaha. Hahaha.'Next to Heaven by James Frey (Swift £18.99 pp336). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members