“Keep in mind though, I’m a PEZ dispenser and I’m in the abnormal Psychology textbook. Who says you can’t have it all?”

Like half a dozen other Cannonballers I have gone back through the Carrie Fisher catalog in the months following her untimely passing.  The Princess Diarist, Shockaholic and now Wishful Drinking (yeah, I realize I went backwards but I read them chronologically the last go around).

“If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.”

I listened to the audio-book this go around, which I wasn’t ready to do with her other two memoirs, and it really punches you in the face how amazing Fisher was. She’s self deprecating in her writing and exuberant in her reading.

Wishful Drinking focuses on her relationship with her mother, the late great Debbie Reynolds, similar to how Shockaholic focused more on her father.  The story about her brother getting shot with a blank, and her mother’s reaction to it, was hilarious. Carrie also gives her mother a lot of grief about her failed marriages and the movie star accent she adopted when she came to Hollywood but overall the love they shared shines through.

Fisher deconstructs a few of her failed relationships like her marriage to Paul Simon and Bryan Lourd, the father of her daughter, who left her for a man. She is also incredibly candid about her drug and alcohol addictions as well as her Manic Depressive diagnosis and subsequent hospital stays.

There are several “too soon” commentaries about her eventual death which hurts the soul but overall this is a fun read that holds up with time.

“I tell my younger friends that one day they’ll be at a bar playing pool and they’ll look up at the television set and there will be a picture of Princess Leia with two dates underneath, and they’ll say, “Awww—she said that would happen.”
And then they’ll go back to playing pool.”

According to Goodreads the last time I read this, about 5 years ago, I rated it 3 Stars but didn’t upload a review. Perhaps this is a 3 or 3.5 star book that, since I love and miss Carrie Fisher, I am choosing to rate higher than it deserves. It meanders a bit and is a bit repetitive but overall it feels intimate and conversational. Either way, it’s fucking Carrie Fisher- there are worst ways to spend your time.