Carrie Fisher is a former Hollywood actress and former alcoholic and drug addict with a famous (and famously pushy) mother. Postcards From The Edge is her novel about a Hollywood actress who's a recovering alcoholic and drug addict with a famous... well, you get the idea! Suzanne Vale has accidentally overdosed on drugs and realises that this might be a good time to reassess her life- but starting out clean and sober takes some getting used to: working on small-time films where she has to take a drugs test every day and listen to everyone's opinions of her work is almost as little fun as dating without the help of alcohol...
The book begins with a fast paced, black-humoured first-person tense rehab diary ("maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares?") then switches to third person narrative as Suzanne gets out of rehab and starts over. I admire writers who play about with form, it keeps me guessing, and in this case, it isn't hard to keep track of. The scholar in me (who knew?!) thinks it also serves a literary purpose and shows how disconnected Suzanne feels from those around her and even her own body, now there's nothing more toxic than diet coke in her system.
Postcards is a cult classic- a book to be read and re-read, gawped at and laughed over. It's also full of eminently quotable conversations such as Suzanne and her friend Lucy discussing their lethargy:
"...Maybe it is food allergies, maybe my mom's right. Maybe this is all tuna"...
"Could we be having a nervous breakdown- a controlled nervous breakdown?"
"I don't know... I'm not that nervous, and it's not really a breakdown. It's more of a backdown, or a backing off. A pit stop... that's what we're having, a not-so-nervous pit stop."
Clearly a lot of material here is based on Carrie's own experiences, and if you've seen Ms Fisher interviewed you'll know the voice of Suzanne- so sharp and clever- is a thinly veiled version of the author. But they say "write what you know" for a reason: this is a fantastic look at addiction that (as Tom Robbins says on the back of the book) "shows us what despair is like when it refuse to take itself seriously."
James Frey could take more than a few lessons...
Rating: 5 out of 5
Like this? Try Hanging Up by Nora Ephron, Delusions of Grandma by Carrie Fisher.
