After reading The Princess Diarist, Fisher’s last work before her untimely death, I decided to reread her other two memoirs throughout the year. While Wishful Drinking came first chronologically I started with Shockaholic because, well, I forgot Wishful Drinking came out first.
“I mean, clearly no one would vote for volts until everything else had failed. It’s reserved for those languishing in the suicidal ideation lounge, and I had never been truly suicidal. Not that I haven’t, on occasion, thought it might be an improvement over the all-too-painful present if I could be deadish for maybe just a teeny little bit of it. You know, like a really good sleep, after which I’d wake refreshed and equal to whatever the problem had been, that problem would have now vanished.”
Carrie Fisher was a national treasure; she was also an advocate for mental health and Shockaholic delves into her experiences with ECT. She also spend a lot of time discussing her father, their trouble relationship and his brief marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. I will always love the story of how Liz and Carrie managed to get past the potential awkwardness with a simple pool push. Her views of Michael Jackson are the most interesting though, at least to me, because those aren’t anecdotes most people are familiar with.
Overall Carrie is an open and honest author who uses humor to lighten the darkness of the topics she covers. It’s a bit meandering and most of the essays don’t connect to one another but like everything Fisher touches it is gold.