The Best Awful: A Novel
by Carrie Fisher
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carrie FisherEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-12-28
ISBN: 0743269306
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Reviews of The Best Awful: A Novel
Book Review: The Awful Awful
Summary: 1 Stars
Coping with manic depression personally, I returned this to my library perhaps half read.......I just couldn't subject myself to finishing this book, or perhaps, manic induced journal entries is more accurate. I think so, I have plenty of them to refer to of my own.....
Knowing what manic episodes are and how they affect me I felt my 'mental' ''illness', when it occurs, was totally incited by reading this book, which I am sure was not Carrie's intentions.
I am sure her intention was making tons of money by having it published which I assume she accomplished. Bully for her as she needs it for her shock treatments and meds, none of which I can afford. Perhaps I am better off.....
For me, Carrie at her Best, was the clip of her on you-tube speaking at George Lucas' AFI Life Achievement Award. Pants Peeing HILARIOUS..... THAT IS MEDICINE we manics need, not this awful awful.
Summary of The Best Awful: A Novel
When we left Suzanne Vale at the end of Carrie Fisher's bestselling Postcards from the Edge, she had survived drug abuse, rehab, and Hollywood celebrity. The Best Awful takes Suzanne back to the edge with a new set of troubles -- not the least of which is that her studio executive husband turned out to be gay and has left her for a man.Lonely for a man herself, Suzanne decides that her medication is cramping her style, and she goes off her meds -- with disastrous results. The "manic" side of the illness convinces her it would be a good idea to get a tattoo, cut off her hair, and head to Mexico with a burly ex-con and a stash of OxyContin. As she wakes up in Tijuana, the "depressive" side kicks in, leading Suzanne through a series of surreal psychotic episodes before landing her in a mental hospital. With the help of her movie star mom, a circle of friends, and even her ex-husband, she begins the long journey back to sanity.
Based on a truant's story, The Best Awful is by turns highly comic and darkly tragic, a roller-coaster ride through the dizzying highs and crushing lows of manic depression, yet containing all the fast and furious wit that made Postcards from the Edge both a bestselling novel and a hit movie.
Carrie Fisher's The Best Awful returns Postcards from the Edge fans to the often hilarious, occasionally tragic, but always captivating world of Suzanne Vale, a bi-polar, celebrity talk show host with a six-year old daughter, a gay ex-husband, an aging starlet mother, and an unbreakable will to survive. After Suzanne stops taking her medication, Fisher treats us to the wild, hysterical ride that follows Suzanne's manic episodes, including a search for Oxycontin in Tijuana with her tattoo artist and a new house guest in the form of Hoyt, a clinically depressed patient Suzanne picks up at her psychopharmacologist's office. Even after the inevitable psychotic break lands Suzanne at Shady Lanes, where she's the "latest loony to hit the bin," Fisher never deviates from her trademark wit and uncanny ability to find truth in every irony:
You entered the hospital broken, found some other like broken patient people, and once in their company, looked down on the other more pathetic inhabitants of the bin you shared, those flying even lower than you and your lo-flung co-conspirators...
An insider's look at the Hollywood most of us only read about in supermarket checkout lines, The Best Awful doesn't strive to be anything other than what it is--a rambunctious, honest, wise-cracking trip to rock bottom and back again. Supporting characters are just that, a backdrop against whom Suzanne hopes to find a plausible sense of self. For readers who can accept this novel for what it is, The Best Awful promises over 250 pages of uninhibited entertainment. --Gisele Toueg
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