By Heidi Simmons
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The Best Awful
By Carrie Fisher
Fiction
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Last week I reviewed Debbie Reynolds’ newest memoir Unsinkable. It is a fascinating life of a Hollywood celebrity. She talks very personally about her long career, her marriages and her beloved children Todd and Carrie Fisher. In more than one chapter, Reynolds speaks intimately about her famous daughter’s challenge with drugs and mental illness. It made me curious to read Carrie Fisher’s second autobiographical novel The Best Awful (Simon & Schuster, 271 pages).
A sequel to Fisher’s first and most well-known autobiographical novel Post Cards From the Edge, the character of Suzanne Vail is reprised. Vail is a daughter of two celebrities and herself, a Hollywood actress and screenwriter. The Best Awful begins as Vail struggles to rebuild her life after her husband, Leland, leaves her and her six-year old daughter Honey for a man. Suzanne, apparently, the only one who missed the signals — his attention to wardrobe, neatness and frequent trips to the gym — is heart-broken.
A diagnosed manic-depressive, Vail finds herself making self-destructive decisions. Believing her manic self is far more interesting, likeable and just a lot more fun, she deliberately goes off her meds to welcome her “Lucrezia Borgia”, a conniving sexual vixen unafraid to get what she wants.
While Honey is on vacation with Leland, Vail goes on a search for a heterosexual man and finds herself on too much OxyCotin with an abusive, ex-con, tattoo artist in Tijuana. Stranded and sick, her Hollywood friends come to the rescue but their warnings and concern are not enough. Back at her Beverly Hills home, Vail overdoses and has a psychotic break. Committed to a mental hospital, Vail seriously hopes that her mind can be restored.
Post Cards From the Edge (1987), was written mostly in a first person telling of Vail’s privileged life, drug abuse and challenges being a child of Hollywood royalty. The Best Awful (2004) is a third person narrative, which allows the reader to be in Vail’s head as well as see the big picture of a terrifying mental illness.
After reading Reynolds’ Unsinkable, it is absolutely clear that Suzanne Vail is Carrie Fisher’s avatar. Many events in The Best Awful are confirmed in Reynolds’ memoir. At the very least, the main characters and big beats of what Vail experiences, is what Fisher experienced. And this is important because Fisher shares such an intense inside view of what it feels like to live with severe manic depression.
Fisher has a very literary voice. At times it is poetic and beautiful. She is smart and witty. Clearly, for Fisher, humor is a survival mechanism, but it is also part of Fisher’s nature. She can’t help herself — the humor is self-deprecating, sarcastic and an exaggeration that always makes its point.
Why an autobiographical novel and not just write a memoir like her mother? For one, in fiction, the author can use the “story” to engage the reader. The author can provide an outside and separate narrative of events that creatively fill in the blanks. And the author can remove her private voice and replace it with one that has better insight and understanding. This is what makes Fisher’s book so compelling. She can specifically share what it felt like from her interior world, as well as the exterior world. With maturity and hindsight, she is able to paint a very provocative and clear picture of her disorder. Suzanne Vail’s story is relatable, sympathetic and real. Fisher is a reliable narrator.
Vail’s biggest concern is for her beautiful and precocious young daughter. Her fear is, not only that she is a bad mother, but also that she will damage her daughter psychologically. In this, the reader gets some insight to why she, Fisher, may feel she is so fucked-up. Vail’s (and Fisher’s) extraordinary life, raised by narcissistic, self-absorbed parents, was anything but healthy and happy. Vail also identifies with her estranged father known to have shot-up speed. Vail believes her mental illness may have been inherited. That would be Eddie Fisher.
For Suzanne Vail, The Best Awful is when she begins to share and help others in similar situations from drug abuse, mental illness and heterosexuals with homosexual husbands. There are many clues in Vail’s travails to find the truth about Carrie Fisher and her famous family and friends. This revealing book may be the closest we come to knowing the real Ms. Fisher.
