Harder to step back and survey the skill, the writerly prowess, that blends the two so seamlessly into one. “Easy to raise the veil on Vale and see Carrie Fisher behind it,” friend and fellow mental health advocate, Stephen Fry, proffered in a recent foreword for the novel. ![]() The seemingly autobiographical narrative, however, isn’t as reliable as Fisher would have you believe. Like Fisher, 30-year-old Vale is a Hollywood actor who is wrestling with two versions of herself: the unstable addict who is trying to “dial down” the deafening voices inside her head, and the strong-willed entertainer who knows “how to act like a regular person” because “portraying reality had become her way of experiencing it”. How much of the character of Suzanne Vale (a Hollywood actor “clawing her way back from the edge in a drug rehabilitation clinic”) is based on real life has been hotly debated – although the central similarities are hard to ignore. From cocaine binges and AA graduations, to toxic first dates and absurdist Hollywood brunches, what keeps readers returning time and time again isn’t simply the novel’s tell-all honesty – it’s the author’s satirical lens. Fast, erudite, and searingly funny, Fisher’s kamikaze tale of a Hollywood actor’s adventures in and out of rehab took her vulnerabilities by the scruff of the neck and shook them onto the page. It’s a novel that still dazzles and provokes, even today – and paved a way for Fisher at a crossroads in her life and career. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares? My life is over anyway,” Fisher deadpans in the opening pages of her roman à clef, Postcards from the Edge, a razor-sharp book about addiction and mental illness that is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. Not only did she want to write a book, she already knew what the first line would be, inspired by her recent ordeal in the emergency room. The invitation couldn’t have been better timed. Months before, she had accidentally overdosed on tranquillisers and had been bundled, unconscious, into the front passenger seat of a car by three friends and rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where her stomach was pumped, saving her life. Fisher, whose role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars trilogy had recently catapulted her to A-list fame, had been losing control of her drug use. She was halfway through treatment at New Beginnings rehab centre in Los Angeles. At the time, the 28-year-old actor wasn’t at home, nor was she on a set. It is a revealing look at the dangers-and delights-of all our addictions, from money and success to sex and insecurity.In the summer of 1985, Carrie Fisher received a letter asking if she’d like to write a book. Postcards from the Edge is more than a book about stardom and drugs. This stunning literary debut chronicles Suzanne’s vivid, excruciatingly funny experiences inside the clinic and as she comes to terms with life in the outside world. ![]() Just as Fisher’s first film role-the precocious teenager in Shampoo-echoed her own Beverly Hills upbringing, her first book is set within the world she knows better than anyone else: Hollywood. When we first meet the extraordinary young actress Suzanne Vale, she’s feeling like “something on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and not even someone interesting.” Suzanne is in the harrowing and hilarious throes of drug rehabilitation, trying to understand what happened to her life and how she managed to land in a “drug hospital.” This bestselling Hollywood novel by the witty author of Wishful Drinking and Shockaholic that was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine.
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