I was so looking forward to reading this book. I was hoping it would dish some dirt on Star Wars, working with Belushi in The Blues Brothers, being married to Paul Simon, writing four fab novels and script-doctoring, what it’s really like to be bipolar ….
What a life Carrie Fisher has had! Unfortunately we don’t get nearly enough of it in this slim memoir, which is adapted from her one-woman stage show. I got the feeling that the book was only an edited transcript with added photos, and not adding to the show’s material. Maybe it was too soon after her recent ECT which, in her typically up-front way, she admits has played tricks with her memory.
Short as it was (I read it in one session), I did enjoy it very much. We do learn quite a bit about her megastar parents and growing up without a normal family life. We do touch on her relationships with Paul Simon, then later the chap who fathered her daughter Billie and then came out as gay. We do also find out about the friend who died sleeping next to her in her bed – that’s got out of the way at the start. All this growing up in public, and she was undiagnosed as bipolar for many years, despite going to various shrinks for ages.
You can’t help but feel sisterly towards her and want her to be your friend after reading this book. I hope that if she were to write a full memoir a few years hence (or authorise a biography), it would surely be a different proposition.
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Source: Own copy. To explore on Amazon UK, please click below:
Wishful Drinking
I wondered how this would work as a book. The show is great, but you don’t expect a comprehensive account in a two-hour show. Plus, some of the charm of the show is in the audience interaction, which you can’t really get in a book.
Forewarned is forearmed – I tried to imagine her doing the show as I read it. I did feel a little short-changed by it, but can’t help liking her she’s forgiven.