Posted by I picked this book up not knowing what to expect, I’d never read anything by Carrie Fisher before and I was curious from the title if this would be her story about addiction. Since a few of my family and friends have suffered from alcoholism I decided to pick it up.
This was really more of a biography that covered more than just her troubles with alcohol and drugs – it covered a decent amount about her mother and father as well. She’s pretty blunt and out there with her family scandals and personal life, which I guess isn’t surprising. Her childhood was something for all to see, with a mother who starred in Singing in the Rain you are going to have people in your business all the time. She describes her mother as having two different personalities, the mother they loved being around, and this glamorous hollywood type personality who seemed like someone other than their mother. Her mom was also pretty eccentric, at one point she repeatedly brought up a suggestion that Carrie should have a child with her own husband (Debbies husband) because she had gone through menopause and couldn’t have a kid – so why not have her daughter have a kid with him instead? After all “he has nice eyes”.
Carrie certainly struggled with a lot of shit, and had a very interesting life. She actually claims, and I don’t know why when being so brutally honest about other things she’d lie – but after having electro shock therapy for her bipolarism and depression, she lost a good deal of her memory. She had to be reintroduced to her own life in some respects and I can’t imagine what that would be like. To lose a good part of yourself and your memories would be earth shattering for me, but she seemed to handle it better than I would.
The book was pretty funny and witty, but also a bit repetitive, there was a lot of talk revolving around the same thing, and information was repeated a few times for being such a short book – it’s what knocked it from a 5 to a 4 star.
The book has a lot of heart, a lot of her personal shit laid out for everyone and I think that worked as a kind of therapy for her. Seems like she was a fun person who could be a lot to handle, and a personality type that doesn’t come around very often.
I listened to it on audiobook and she’s very good at narrating her own story, comedic timing was on point and she gave a lot of emotion to the performance.