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Summary: The bi-polar world of "crazy"
Review: I found this lastest book by Fischer particularly enlightening. I was recently diagnosed with bi-polar II. After all of the medical information I've received, coupled with anecdotal stories, I found this to be an accurate and refreshingly funny insight into our world of "crazy". I truly understand "The Best Awful" as I reflect upon my life. This is also helpful for family members and friends who may have some trouble understanding or dealing with the diagnosis...they will see parts they can relate to, as the main character has frustrated friends trying to "piece" her back together! "Bravo" for Fischer and her courage with this subject.
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Summary: Couldn't come up with a title for my review - sorry
Review: I liked The Best Awful - a lot - but for some weird reason, when I like a book and set out trying to describe what I like about it, words fail me. (Whereas if I read a book I hate, I never seem to have any trouble articulating precisely what I hate about it.) So suffice it to say that, all in all, The Best Awful did not disappoint me. I've read all of Carrie Fisher's books and I really love her voice.
My one complaint (a minor complaint, mind you) is that one of of her real-life friends that she'd based a character on was instantly recognizable, which I found annoying. Now, I know Fisher's books are based on her own life, but for some reason, I never pictured Carrie Fisher when reading about Suzanne Vale in Postcards from the Edge. Although I knew it was an autobiography of sorts, I read it as a work of fiction. And that's how I read The Best Awful, too, until I got to the page where Suzanne's pregnant friend drops by. I didn't even know Fisher and Beverly D'Angelo were friends, nor did I feel that I needed to be informed of this. (And it's not like I recognized D'Angelo because I know a lot about her - the only reason I even know her name and what she looks like is because the press wrote about her and Al Pacino for a while - but Fisher's description of her was so painstakingly accurate that I immediately recognized her anyway.) I was, like, "What's Beverly D'Angelo doing in Suzanne's bedroom?". I'm sure there are people who bought the book to play spot-the-celebrity, but I'm not one of those people, so for me, as I said, that part was just annoying, not to mention distracting.
Actually, I have one more complaint, but it will seem bafflingly irrelevant to anyone except the people who will be publishing the paperback (and maybe even to them), so for anyone else reading this review: please skip this part, or you'll end up wishing you had.
OK, here goes: The cover art is unfortunate. Not in and of itself - it wouldn't bother me at all if the picture was limited to the front cover of the dust jacket, but it covers the spine of the dust jacket as well, which means the book is now languishing in a desk drawer next to other books I for various reason don't want to display on my bookshelves (Seven Secrets of Slim People, anyone?) instead of hanging out with its friends Postcards From the Edge, Surrender the Pink and Delusions of Grandma on my bookshelf, because the way it looked standing on the shelf kind of freaked me out. (If you own the book, try slinding it inbetween the other books on your shelf, and take a step back - you'll see what I mean.) I know, I know, I could just remove the dust jacket, but then I'd just end up losing it, which would be inconvenient for when I want to read the book again or lend it to someone.
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Summary: Rebuttal to "Delusions of Postcards" Review below
Review: If you hated this book so much, why did you spend the time required in finishing it? I've found if a book is not my cup of tea, it's better to cut my losses and go onto something else. Heaven knows, there are so many books out there and not enough seconds left in my life to read all the ones I want to; but I cannot understand it when a person spends their time finishing a book that is unappealing to them and then compounds the waste by writing a mean spirited, scating review. This book is funny and revelatory and even a little bit brave, and I am glad I took the time and to read it and glad I was able to take the effort to write something positive about it.
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Summary: Delusions of Postcards
Review: New rule for me: if an author I really, really like takes a ten-year break between novels, don't read the result. First Donna Tartt, now Carrie Fisher. The Best Awful is just awful, an embarrassing, boring, and just awfully written masturbatory romp in the literary hay with one's own psyche.If it seems to you that I'm spewing sophomoric little plays on words in this review, it's possibly because I just finished reading ONE THOUSAND of them in this book. See, The Best Awful is the unawaited sequel to Postcards from the Edge, which surprised everyone with its witty, sarcastic, and yet touching look at the frazzled Suzanne Vale's life on the edges of Hollywood and her trying relationship to her celebrity mother (a.k.a. Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds). Not satisfied to have written her quasi-autobiography so early in her life, Fisher has returned to these characters for some personal reason that should have never been allowed to become public, no matter how en vogue little novels of fractured females have become. In this uninstallment, Vale has had a daughter and been promptly dumped not for another woman, but for a man. Oh the millennial perspective! Oh that mixed-up place called Hollywood! Of course, she reacts badly, getting off her medication and going on a drug spree that lands her in a mental institution called-get this-"Shady Lanes." With a modicum of self-control, this plot could have been as perceptively developed as Postcards was, a possible post-me-decade second look at the world Vale inhabited back then. The fact that the book is a sequel is not what's wrong with it. What's wrong with it is that it hasn't moved on to another world, that it offers no further insight into any of its characters. Instead, you get pages (and pages and pages) of Vale's self-involved, mania-induced blithering soliloquy, unedited. Pages. It's one thing to attempt to show what a mind goes through as it breaks down, and it's another thing to make a novel out of it. Unless you're impressed by tenth-grade punning such as "come hell or high daughter" or "no room at the bin," Vale's breakdown has nothing to offer other than an unsavory look at a world we saw (better) in Postcards. Nothing wrong with following around a character who neglects her daughter and abuses her friends if I care for her for some reason, because she's witty, or tortured, or a vehicle for some truth about the human soul the author has uncovered. But, if she's none of these, she's really just a chatty seatmate on a bus to whom not even the other characters in the book want to listen. In terms of it being a look into the bipolar mind, well, sure, if that's what you want, a look. But chances are the average reader is not going to care much for what she sees there, because the bipolar mind suffers from the same problems the novel does: it is neither entertaining nor a revelation of anything. It is simply a nonsensical, painful collection of broken thoughts that don't even make sense to the thinker. Or the reader.
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Summary: Everything I Expected and MORE
Review: Postcards From The Edge and My Fractured Life are two of my favorite books of all time. I was thrilled to hear Carrie Fisher was going to continue her character from Postcards (Suzanne Vale) in a new book. The Best Awful is crazy and wonderful and everything I expected and more. I read it once and immediately started on it again. It's the best book I've read since My Fractured Life and Pleasure of My Company.
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Summary: The Stigma Goes Hollywood
Review: Reading the book, you can see how we are, for good or bad, a product of our upbringing & environment. Suzanne Vale is dealing w/pretentious hollywood execs, personal issues w/a mother who is stuck living in her past stardome years,a husband who is not what he seems and a daughter who, bless her heart, probably is "holding it down" better than all of them.
Carrie Fisher has that quick wit and imagination that brings what would otherwise be a mundane memoir to the status of a modern day made for TV Hollywood hit. She give you permission to laugh about something that is gradually becoming "alright" to talk about; the actual consequences of the highs & lows of bi-polar illness...with Hollywood in all it's tragedy & humor.
To know this book is real makes it even more appaudable.
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Summary: A survivor....
Review: Suzanne Vale from Postcards from the Edge has a child with a gay man who apparently somehow forgot to tell her he was gay. I don't understand how that could really happen, but hey, it's pretty funny. I really like the girl who gets money off of other people swearing. It's quite a funny book, don't get me wrong. I would also recommend The World of Luke by Luke Birell for a good laugh.
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Summary: "Your crazy's girl, keeping crazy company like mad."
Review: The Best Awful has to be one of the most stylistically uneven books I've read in quite awhile. There are moments of absolute hilarity, as Fisher recounts with sobering realism, Suzanne Vale's descent into madness. But there are also sections of relentless monotony - long passages of interior monologues showing Suzanne's almost stream-of-consciousness-like ruminations on insanity, which just go on and on and eventually become tiresome. Fisher is obviously very accomplished at writing about manic depression/bi-polar disorders and substance abuse, and I'm sure that many of Suzanne's escapades in the Best Awful probably reflect the author's own battles with mental health. There is no doubt that the novel is quasi-autobiographical, and if any one has ever seen Fisher interviewed, they will certainly be familiar with her acerbic and sobering humour which is reflected in this book.
Things are seemingly going well for Suzanne Vale; she's an established fixture of the Hollywood entertainment scene, with her own variety show on cable television. But as the novel opens Suzanne is feeling a little dejected: Her husband has realized that he's gay and has run off with a man and Suzanne is left to shoulder the responsibilities of mothering her young, precocious daughter Honey. After a few failed affairs with some butch, strapping hetero guys, she decides to stop taking her bipolar medication, in the hope that she will be able to see the world more clearly. When "events begin to run together like spilt colors down a steep hill" thing start to really go bad, when in a fit of mad enthusiasm she maniacally gets a tattoo, cuts her hair off, and then goes on a drug fueled, misguided expedition to Tijuana, with her shady, illicit tattoo artist.
Her irresponsible adventures are all undertaken with a great sense of camaraderie and fun. Suzanne thinks it's hilarious that there is an illness whose symptoms are "spending sprees, substance abuse and sexual promiscuity - just your typical weekend in Vegas." And of course refusing to take her medications causes a "giddy, glittering high-octane thrill to surge through her system, carbonating her blood as it sweeps through her veins." Suzanne - who literally is the American dream - can only lose in life, the great conquistador in her eternal "search for all members of the tribe of smart and funny." Of course her antics catch up with her, and various friends are forced to come to her rescue. She eventually receives a sobering reminder of the price one pays for "madness."
Suzanne, paralleling the image Americans are sold in television and magazines, cannot find happiness with who she is. There's always a better Suzanne, somewhere over some rainbow, in the valley of some doll and this unjustified sense of failure drives the actress and word player extraordinaire from emotional trauma to mental breakdown. Ruminations on the nature of sanity make this book bearable: Where does crazy go when it's not busy with you. Does it rest up for another round? Where did it come from? Was it able to hear some end-of-sanity bell? This book is only recommended if the reader can stand an intricate, relentless account of the descent into madness. Mike Leonard September 04.
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Summary: Flawless and Original
Review: The Best Awful is Carrie Fisher's best book since Postcards From the Edge. Using the same character allegedly inspired by Carrie Fisher herself, it picks up flawlessly with the tempo and nuiances established in her original. For fans of the biographical-fiction gone Hollywood genre, it is one of the best; easily in the same league as Fisher's Postcards From the Edge and Rikki Lee Travolta's My Fractured Life. Far more depth than any others in the field (no offense Jackie C.).
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Summary: Tell Me About Mania
Review: The Best Awful is Carrie Fisher's semi-autobiographical sequel to Postcards From the Edge. However, you do not have to be familiar with the story but may jump right in.
Suzanne is a Hollywood actress with her own talk show. She has bipolar disorder and is a former drug addict. She lives with her six-year-old daughter, Honey. Suzanne is struggling to come to terms with the fact that her ex-husband, Leland, left her for another man. After three years in mourning, Suzanne decides it is time to see whether she can still charm a heterosexual male.
After a night of casual sex, Suzanne wants to continue her quest for straight males. She decides to bring out her alter ego-Lucrezia. Lucrezia is her manic self and Suzanne reasons that she will just drop off a few pills for a couple of days to help her blossom and win a man. Then she will resume her medication schedule. However, after a few days, she drops off all of her medication rather than adding it back.
Next Suzanne goes through classic manic signs such as incessant talking, reckless driving, self medication with oxycontin, spending sprees, and a road trip with a complete stranger (an ex-convict tattoo artist).
Suzanne has to call a friend to come pick her up from a bus stop at the Mexican border. She finally agrees to see a doctor, but she has a bad reaction to a new medication that her doctor prescribes. This causes a psychotic break. After six days without sleep, Suzanne finds a new sense of timing. She becomes focused on the past and future-unable to think about the present. She can't differentiate between the other and thinks that everything is about her. She lets her grooming go.
She is hospitalized and later transferred to Shady Lane (a psychiatric hospital). The new medications stabilize her, but she must deal with the unwanted side effect of weight gain. While in the hospital she loses track of time and is horrified when she forgets her daughter's seventh birthday.
Once released from the hospital, she must move on with her life. She comes to terms with the fact that her ex-husband is gay and even helps a friend who has to face the same with her husband. She also learns that her bipolar disorder is not something she can dismiss.
Several times I found myself reading sentences more than once to catch their meaning. Fisher is witty and often writes complex phrases. The expeditions are realistic of a manic person. The Hollywood lifestyle adds an interesting twist. The story is believable-after all some of it is true. It is a little depressing to follow Suzanne's climb into mania, as I'm sure it is to watch any person deteriorate without being able to help them. Hopefully Suzanne (and Carrie) have learned not to intentionally provoke a manic episode again.
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