The Best Awful

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: Suzanne's Lost Her Marbles
Review: Suzanne Vale who we were first introduced to in "Postcards from the Edge" returns long enough to veer off the edge of sanity and welcome us to her breakdown. Her husband has left her for another man, her fiercely intelligent daughter is more grown up than she is, and her life keeps sputtering forward while beginning to careen wildly out of control. The book, which is filled with Fishers signature wit and dry humor, really takes flight once her illness fully manifests itself. LIke driving past an accident I found myself unable to look away as one folly built on another. Knowing how the character parallels Fishers own life, I found myself reading the book wondering what was real and what was not. A (strange to say) entertaining read.

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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.


Rating:
Summary: confessions of a dangerous mind
Review: THE BEST AWFUL is Carrie Fisher's autobiographical sequel to POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE. Suzanne Vale, a medium-famous actress and daughter of the indomitable Doris, is a single mother reeling from being left by her husband Leland, who is gay. The book chronicles Suzanne's struggles with manic depression and some fairly bold drug use, told with the sense of humor of someone who realizes how silly the "business of show" is.
Events don't occur so much as coalesce around Suzanne, who narrates in a addled stream of consciousness style. A disatrous drug fueled trip to Tijuana and a stay in a mental hospital are harrowingly sketched and are the main set pieces of the book. I enjoyed seeing Suzanne through to a slightly ambiguous but hopeful ending, in which she forms a slightly different kind of family. Some of the secondary characters are thin and there's nothing new in the sending up of Hollywood life, but THE BEST AWFUL is a survivor's story by someone who has earned the right to tell it.

Rating:
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.).

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: BiPolar Manic Attack in the Movie Biz
Review: This book was reccomended to by a person stricken with mental illness, so I was expecting a more realistic portrayal of the manic-depressive cycle. My main criticism is that the line between fact and fiction was blurred. I would have preferred a real live bio from Carrie Fisher than this loosely disguised tale. However, I did enjoy the (almost trashy) sensationalized pace of the novel and plan to read her other works.

Rating:
Summary: Good novel, OK intro to bipolar
Review: This book was reccomended to by a person stricken with mental illness, so I was expecting a more realistic portrayal of the manic-depressive cycle. My main criticism is that the line between fact and fiction was blurred. I would have preferred a real live bio from Carrie Fisher than this loosely disguised tale. However, I did enjoy the (almost trashy) sensationalized pace of the novel and plan to read her other works.

Rating:
Summary: always witty, that Carrie Fisher
Review: This book was well written. Boy can she turn a phrase, in a way that makes you smile and maybe laugh, even as she's using her gift for language to describe coming apart at the seems, getting herself in real trouble in Mexico, or being committed to a psych ward. I wasn't always all that interested in the plot, but I was always interested in the words she chose to describe things and her (remember that Suzanne is her ficitonalized alter ego) reactions to them.

I beg to differ with at least one of the other reviews. THis is not a polemic against pharmachological treatments for mental illness. She's not the one that got away from the psychiatrists. In fact, it's going off her treatment that sends her spiraling out of control. She's pretty upfront about that. This is one of those times when the reviews say more to me about the reviewers than the reviewed. At least I'm upfront about my bias in favor of pithy writing.