2023 EDIT: Taken from my 'The Princess Diarist' rereview:
Part of my 2023 book clear-up, I'm afraid. I'm being particularly picky about the autobiographies and memoirs I own (and in the case of Carrie Fisher, some of the reason for my clearing is my no longer being comfortable owning anything relating to 'Star Wars'). I don't like everything Fisher wrote[...] I also wonder how different it might have been if it had been published after Me Too.
RIP Carrie Fisher, you will always be missed.
Final Score (for 'The Princess Diarist' and 'Wishful Drinking'): 3.5/5
Original Review:
The first book I've read by Carrie Fisher, and it won't be the last.
'Wishful Drinking' is a funny, engaging, addictive (heh heh), sobering (heh heh) little memoir that can be consumed in a day. In between work breaks, even.
It really does read like Carrie is talking to a friend she's known for a long time, whom she is now spilling her secrets and life observations to; seemingly at random at first, but it makes the best sense towards the end of her confessions. The anecdotes are funny, often dark, unbelievable yet true. Reality IS more bizarre than in the movies.
It honestly feels like Carrie Fisher was a marvellous, friendly but no-bullshit woman - she of worldly experiences and celeb families - in spite of her problems (hey, who doesn't have those?). She is a pop culture icon for many reasons, one of them for mental health awareness.
It is an absolute travesty, almost unreal, that she had to die the way she did, and so soon. Celebrity deaths don't affect me normally, but hers in particular broke me in a way no other has; it is one of the thousands of relentless blows on humanity in the year of everybody's punishment, 2016.
Now in Carrie's name and memory, I will finally read some of what she has written when she was so alive it hurt. Who says that actors can't be good writers?
One racist remark aside - where she says that when her father married a Chinese lady, Betty Lin, he had been to Chinatown so often and had had so many face-lifts, that he started to look Asian, so he and Betty were like a matched set - the rest of her humour is fish-hook-line-and-sinker for the snark crowd.
Learn a little about Carries Fisher as a person in 'Wishful Drinking' (and about her beloved, hilarious mother, Debbie Reynolds). It is a re-readable feast; a book that is like a box of chocolates where each page is a varying treat for various tastes. From Carrie's times in rehab and with psychologists, it seems like honesty and humour is one of the best medicines.
Plus, regardless of how you were born, who your family is (Hollywood royalty or no), and how you live your life, isn't everyone to be perceived as a little crazy?
RIP, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.
Final Score: 4/5
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