'Wishful Drinking is a touching and incisive account of bipolarity, addiction and motherhood.' Independent
‘No motive is pure. No one is good or bad – but a hearty mix of both. And sometimes life actually gives to you by taking away.' Carrie Fisher in Wishful Drinking
In Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher told the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit.
Born to celebrity parents, she was picked to play aprincess in a little movie calledStar Wars when only 19 years old. "But it isn't all sweetness and light sabres." Alas, aside from a demanding career and her role as a single mother (not to mention the hyperspace hairdo), Carrie also spends her free time battling addiction and weathering the wild ride of manic depression.
It's an incredible tale: from having Elizabeth Tayloras a stepmother, to marrying (and divorcing) Paul Simon, and from having the father of her daughter leave her for a man, to ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.
Carrie Fisher's star-studded career included roles in numerous films such as The Blues Brothersand When Harry Met Sally. She was the author of four bestselling novels, Surrender in the Pink, Delusions of Grandma, The Best Awful and Postcards from the Edge, which was made into a hit film starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep. Carrie's experience with addiction and mental illness – and her willingness to talk honestly about them – made her a sought-after speaker and respected advocate. She was truly one of the most magical people to walk among us.
I grew up on Star Wars, but I never truly became a 'fan' of Carrie Fisher. Princess Leia, although I liked the character, never spoke to me. She was not the kind of character I could identify with, as I did with Roald Dahl's Matilda or Rowling's Hermione. Therefore it came as less of a shock to me when she passed, and it was the outpouring of grief that followed that made me curious about Carrie Fisher as a person. Her heyday was well before my time, and I knew even less about her Hollywood roots.
In a way, Wishful Drinking was not written for a reader like me. Many of the people Ms Fisher discusses in the book, I had never heard about. Nor is the glitzy, glamorous Hollywood life in itself interesting to me. What I was looking for was a sense of her personality, and Wishful Drinking has loads of this. Ms Fisher has a wonderful voice that really shines in this book, even though the material itself is often (to me, at least) uninteresting. Her adoration for her mother, her laconic way of dealing with her mental illness, and the almost movie-like way of growing up are all fascinating and described in honesty. Though it never truly delves too deep, Wishful Drinking gives an insight into the witty and sparkling personality of Carrie Fisher.
