Book Reviews

	Postcards from the Edge (January, 1991) Postcards from the Edge chronicles the excruciatingly funny adventures of Suzanne Vale, young film star and drug addict, who survives a rehab clinic only to rejoin the equally harrowing world of Hollywood. Out there on the edge, despair flips into hilarity, and we're left laughing as Suzanne struggles to come to terms with her various fantasylands. Buy this book at Amazon.com
	Surrender the Pink (November, 1991) The victim of a painful past and a fatherless childhood, Dinah Kaufman is searching for love that will last - or at least, a reasonable facsimile that comes with a warranty. She nearly found it in her marriage to hugely successful playwright Rudy Gendler. But when she fights to hold on to that now-extinct romance - or at least prevent Rudy from falling for someone new - Dinah finds herself in a variety of wild situations. She also discovers some hard-learned truths as she seeks to bridge the eternal chasm between men and women. Buy this book at Amazon.com
	Delusions of Grandma (April, 1994) Cora, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, and boyfriend, Ray, whose mother is recuperating from breast surgery as their guest, are visited by Cora's friend Bud. When things get out of control Cora runs back home to her mother, a retired musical comedy star, with Bud in tow. Her mom Viv, a kooky retired costume designer, decides to abduct her aged father from a nursing home - he's suffering from Alzheimer's disease - and take him to his childhood home in Whitewright, Texas. Buy this book at Amazon.com
	The Best Awful (January, 2004) Suzanne Vale, the Hollywood actress whose drug addictions and rehab rigors were so brilliantly dissected by Carrie Fisher in Postcards from the Edge, is back. And this time she has a new problem: She's had a child with someone who forgot to tell her he was gay. He forgot to tell her, and she forgot to notice. What's worse, Suzanne's not sure she has what it takes to be the best mother to her daughter, Honey. She can't seem to shake the blues from losing Honey's father, Leland, to Nick -- the man who got the man who got away. Or maybe those aren't the blues, just more symptoms of her sprawling multi-symptom bipolar illness: an illness Suzanne can't bring herself to take all that seriously, no matter what her doctors say. (After all, how serious can an illness be whose symptoms are spending sprees, substance abuse, and sexual promiscuity?) And now, worst of all, under the watchful round eyes of the pills the doctors plied her with, even her friends are starting to find her a little...boring. The obvious solution is to take a little walk on the wild side. But what starts out as a brief gambol through the scary/fun world of twenty-first-century dating becomes a vigorous jog-trot through the latest drug wonderland -- and finally a wild gallop toward a psychotic break and a stay in "the bin." Buy this book at Amazon.com

This book marks Carrie's debut as a novelist. The book was such a big success that it has been turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine. Carrie wrote the screenplay for the movie adaptation as well. Postcards from the Edge is autobiographic (like all of her novels up to now) and deals with the period she spent in rehab and how it affected her life, both professional and private.

Some parts made me laugh out loud. The passage that stands out for me is that a gay guy confides to Suzanne that he once spilled something so that the bed sheets melted to his balls. Upon which Suzanne dryly comments that it "would make a nice TV movie".

I find Carrie's writing style very appealing and I love her sense of humour. People who expect to get a dark and serious book about overcoming a drug addiction should buy another book. Postcards from the Edge gives the reader an impression of what life is like in Hollywood and how Carrie perceives it.

This follow-up of Carrie's debut novel Postcards from the Edge is in no way l a sequel. The things the main character, Dinah Kaufman, goes through in the book resemble Carrie's marriage to singer Paul Simon. It is a very witty book - again - and I think you have to share Carrie's sense of humour to fully appreciate it.

My favourite passage in the book is when Dinah decides to take a look at the house where her ex-boyfriend lives with his new girlfriend, where she hides inside a closet filled with shoes. I kept wondering if what parts of the book are made up and what parts are based on real life events. My conclusion was that the most hilarious parts probably really happened ;- )

Personally I rate Postcards from the Edge higher than Surrender the Pink, which doesn't mean this book isn't worthwhile reading. Somehow I just relate more to her debut novel, although I find Surrender the Pink a highly entertaining read.

In the third novel of Carrie Fisher, Delusions of Grandma, main character Cora is eight and a half months pregnant. She and her boyfriend Ray Beaudrilleaux - a somewhat younger Hollywood lawyer - split up while she is pregnant. Cora writes letters to her unborn child that pop up throughout the book. The relationship between Cora and Ray is clearly based on Carrie's relationship with Bryan Lourd, who left her for a man (who wouldn't write a book about that!).

As I haven't developed any "maternal instincts" or whatever, I can't relate to this book very much, although I did enojoy reading it. As in her two previous novels, Carrie manages to make you laugh about the saddest things that can happen in a person's life (being left by your boyfriend while you're pregnant is usually no laughing matter), which I find quite an accomplishment.

I find it an amusing book to read, but frankly liked the two predecessors better.

For a couple of months this book has been standing on my bookself, waiting to be picked up. I'm going to read it in due course and will put up the review in December.