Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39281 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Customer Reviews

When can we have the full memoir?
What a life Carrie Fisher has had! Unfortunately we don't get enough of it in this slim memoir, adapted from her one-woman show. I got the feeling that the book was only an edited transcript with added photos, and not adding much to the show's material. Maybe it was too soon after her ECT which has played tricks with her memory - if she were to write a full memoir a few years hence, it would surely be a different proposition. Short as it was, I did enjoy it though. You definitely feel sisterly towards her and want her to be your friend after reading it.

Witty and entertaining
This is a short book, don't expect an encycopedia length biography to send you to sleep on the train, and at times it does read a little like the transcript of her one woman show, which it is based on, rather than a book in its own right. But, that said, Carrie's writing is incisive and funny and if only half the stories were true she would have had an astounding life. I most enjoyed the anecdotes about her mother, star of one of my favourite movies ever, and the way in which she clearly gets battier as she ages. Their altercations may have hollywood granduer as their backdrop but, in essence, are little different than the frustrations that come with loving someone and find them intensely irritating in the same moment. I love Carrie Fisher and really enjoyed reading this, even if I finished it in an afternoon rather than the longer book I expected.

Aren't you a little short for a biography?
Alas that old demon got to me, not drink or drugs - expectation.

I'd read an excerpt from this book in a newspaper and was looking forward to the full story. I like Fishers candid style and let's face it - she's had one hell of a life so far. The problem is that huge parts of that story are just plain missing. You only get tiny snippets which just don't stand together as someone's biography. It reads more like a conversation at a party. Or a first date when you're trying to get your worst washing hung out front to see if your audience will pick up and run... It just didn't work for me. It's not just that it's short it also comes across as expositional and not in any way intimate.

Perhaps I was hoping for too much but I really felt it was like a long(ish) version of a newspaper column, the kind of thing that gets churned out week in / out by many (often entertaining) journo's.

Maybe the memories truly are lost or too painful to put into print but I can't rate what's not there. Sorry Carrie, I really did want to like it more.