Helpful Score: 4
This book chronicles the terrible spiral of a manic depressive who decides she no longer wishes to take her medication. It chronicles her descent into madness that seems exciting and alive to her but is fraught with danger and excess. I found it a fantastic read.
Helpful Score: 3
This novel is a hilarious, occasinally tragic, but always captivating story of Suzanne, a celebrity talk show host. She has an aging starlet mom, a six-year old daughter and a gay ex-husband. Suzanne also happens to be bi-poler. The book is filled with dry-wit and humor.....compared to Suzanne, you can't help but think that your own life isn't too bad after all!
Carrie Fishers' writing can be very "bitting" at times and you either love her or hate her. If you like to take a peek at the tabloids in the supermarket, than you will love this laugh-out-loud book!
Carrie Fisher is also the author of the "searingly funny" novels POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE and SURRENDER THE PINK.
Carrie Fishers' writing can be very "bitting" at times and you either love her or hate her. If you like to take a peek at the tabloids in the supermarket, than you will love this laugh-out-loud book!
Carrie Fisher is also the author of the "searingly funny" novels POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE and SURRENDER THE PINK.
funny, touching, witty - typical of Fisher's writing.
Reading this is the next best thing to actually being bipolar. It's a wild ride through Fisher's psychosis.
AWESOME makes me want to be thema and louise this is that type of book
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:
Getting out of the mental hospital wasn't all Suzanne hoped it would be. There was no waiting throng of well-wishers, no ticker tape parade. She'd imagined she would go running through the gates of Shady Lanes with a spring in her step and a sparkle of certainty in her eye. As she passed by, a nurse would turn to a newly admitted patient and say proudly, "That's Suzanne Vale. We learned more from her during her stay with us than I think she ever could've gotten from us. Why, in the end, I don't think she's mentally ill so much as a kind of misunderstood eccentric, more unique than mad, really." Sane old...sane old...you know what I mean?
Amazon.com
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
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
The inimitable Suzanne Vale returns to battle her demons (drugs, bipolar disorder and Hollywood self-obsession) in actress and screenwriter Fisher's blackly comic sequel to Postcards from the Edge. Leland Franklin, a studio executive whose protectiveness helped Suzanne find her "far-flung best self," dumps her-for a man-when their beloved daughter, Honey, is three, and Suzanne is left "with a child, a grudge, and a bright phosphorous gnaw of pain glowing in the hot spot of her chest." Three years later, Suzanne is still struggling. Though born into show business, then a film star, now a successful talk show hostess (much like her creator), it's Suzanne's love for Honey that keeps her going-oh, and prescription drugs. She has a friend in Craig, a fellow court jester and "DNA jackpot" who pulls her out of tight spots, each "one more in a long line of bad judgment calls." After Suzanne and a tattoo artist named Tony hit Tijuana in a quest for Oxycontin, for example, Craig comes to her rescue. But the trip has "pulled crazy closer to her," and Suzanne experiences a psychotic break that lands her in the Shady Lanes loony bin. Pharmacological facts and scenes from group therapy are revealed with Fischer's trademark irony and nonstop wisecracks. Rather than hide the painful truths of mental disorders, her humor serves to highlight them. Fischer contrives a Hollywood happy ending for Suzanne and Honey, a sweet child who will win readers' hearts, but a little joy amid all the craziness is just what the doctor ordered.--Publisher's Weekly
