This is one book I’d rather not be reading, but the death of Carrie Fisher is what drove me to buying this (and Wishful Drinking) – a greater loss drives a much smaller gain.
But it remains an emphatic gain. As a tour guide into the heads of drugged-up Hollywood types, Fisher brings insight and humour, and a sense of having lived in it. She writes extremely well and, even in the crazy opening chapters it’s hard not to keep reading. That opening, however, is what bothers me most about the book: I either wish it weren’t there, or that it kept going throughout, especially since the end doesn’t quite live up to the start. Yes, it is blunt yet sharp, funny but not satirical (close at times, perhaps an alternate-reality Hollywood), and personal and insightful, but in the next-day’s cold light not quite anything.
I know that sounds like I’m changing my mind as I write, but it’s not how I feel. I’d have been happier with a few more postcards, or fewer postcards and more edge. As it stands I feel like I’ve been on that tour, just I haven’t been changed by it.