Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wishful Drinking
Book Review: Deliciously witty and refreshing
Summary: 5 Stars
I almost never buy books in hardcover, but I'm glad I made an exception to this one. Her wit will have you laughing out loud, and there is a measure of solace to be found in her unabashed veracity of self. It was not too short or lacking, as some other reviews have mentioned, but rather perfectly...encapsulated. ;)Book Review: Diary Rant
Summary: 2 Stars
Fisher's wit is always refreshing to read, however this new glimpse into her mind is not much more than a tease of chaotic blurbs from her past. A mere 162 pages of unorganized thoughts feel more like a diary rant than a 'Wishful Insight'. I can't say that I feel sorry for a super icon that blames her problems on an empire of creative genius. George Lucas was not your problem girl, go back to therapy!Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
After Postcards from the Edge, I was hoping for something witty and funny from this writer, but also a little more substantial. I found this book to be none of those. The author's trivializing of painful experiences by forcing them to work as comic one-liners did not work for me. I read it on a plane, and though it held my attention through the flight, it was mostly because I needed something to read.Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
This book was based on Fisher's one-woman show, and unfortunately, you can tell. Fisher's gags are certainly amusing but her life-story is portrayed in a way that is just too flippant and glib for the reader to take seriously. While her tone would be appropriate on stage, I was hoping for something with a little more substance (or at least some juicy gossip). This book simply doesn't deliver.Book Review: Double Edged Drollery that is Unexpectedly Optimistic
Summary: 5 Stars
I spent all of kindergarten waiting for my brown hair to return to the blonde of babyhood. It was the early 1970's and I would look at women on book jackets, TV shows and magazine covers. My immature inarticulate instincts informed me that these women were being held up as something to strive for, as the feminine version of success so to speak. I noted that they all shared one characteristic. Long Blonde Hair. At the tender age of five I reluctantly abdicated all hope of ever getting my own starring TV role or becoming a modern day princess. It couldn't happen. Not without blonde hair.
Somewhere along the way my body had unwittingly betrayed me. Soon after I turned four my fine dark blonde baby hair metamorphised into a near black thick mop. Once into grade school I realized through observation that light hair went dark, but dark hair did not go light; unless you used peroxide which folks thought was kind of tarty.
Resigned to my wallflower's fate time goes by. The summer of 1977 rolls around and my mother takes me to see Star Wars. Princess Leia enters the screen and I am transfixed by both her strange braided buns and her attitude. She never once bats her eyes to inflame the hero to acts of masculine bravado. Instead her favorite weapons are a sharp tongue, quick wits and when she can get it - a blaster.
Immediately I wanted to be an adventurous heroine too, and I wanted to have long, long hair - just like her. No longer did I want to endure my practical page boy, a "style" that even I recognized was unglam. New potential awakened within me I peep at my mother sitting in the cinema beside me and I have one of my few memorable moments of juvenile illumination.
My mother had long dark hair.
Like Fisher who has always felt outclassed by her own mother's extraordinary beauty, my adequately attractive crop does not compare to the perfect luxury of my mother's youthful tresses which fell glowing to her waist in a sheath of dark chocolate color tipped by highlights of coppery auburn, and so thick that an elastic hair wrap would often snap in half from the pressure of holding back her ponytail.
I had never before seen a movie with a blonde acting so brave, tough and fun as brown-haired Princess Leia. I had never ever seen a blonde with hair as awesome as my mother's completely gorgeous mane. In my nascent femininity I concluded - maybe there was something to being a brunette.
In some way, in some manner, girls all over America were reconsidering their potential as women by taking in this new kind of heroine. And Carrie Fisher is the iconic face of that heroine. Something which thankfully she doesn't take too seriously.
The role of Princess Leia has made Carrie Fisher equally or more famous than her Hollywood parents Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. In her latest book, a memoir, "Wishful Drinking" Fisher lets it all hang out about growing up a Hollywood kid in a dsyfunctional, (even for Hollywood standards) family, her celebrity status, and her various love relationships, including her longstanding romance with singer/songwriter Paul Simon. She also explains some of the freakier incidents that have landed her in the tabloids along with her experiences surrounding her alcoholism, drug addiction and manic-depression diagnosis.
I was unable to read one of her previous novels, "Postcards from the Edge" because I became weary of an endless litany of one-liners which eventually left me in despair of ever picking up the plot. Call me square but I still like my fiction to contain an easily distinguishable plot.
But a memoir by its nature provides enough structure to contain Fisher's inability to pass up a punch line. I read it very quickly which I thought to be a plus, not a disparagement. Thankfully missing is the painful minutia sometimes present in personal memoirs. Instead Fisher rolls along, going from topic to topic, in a way that is strangely not confusing to the reader since it is as if a girlfriend has plopped down on the couch beside you and is telling you about her day. Fisher doesn't dwell on her failures, or overly defend them. The author can admit to the privileges she enjoys, but doesn't dismiss the real challenges of her life either.
Not everyone can adequately distance themselves from their difficulties and portray distress and despair as delightfully funny. Maintaining just the slightest edge of pain in humor makes for the best comedy and this aptitude is one of Fisher's strengths. She tells is like it is without laying it on too thick.
Dark double-edged drollery that is unexpectedly optimistic. A recommended read for all of those early Gen-Xers who adore the original Star Wars series.