The Best Awful: A Novel [Paperback]

Carrie Fisher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 2004

When we left Suzanne Vale at the end of Carrie Fisher's bestselling Postcards from the Edge, she had survived drug abuse, rehab, and Hollywood celebrity. The Best Awful takes Suzanne back to the edge with a new set of troubles -- not the least of which is that her studio executive husband turned out to be gay and has left her for a man.

Lonely for a man herself, Suzanne decides that her medication is cramping her style, and she goes off her meds -- with disastrous results. The "manic" side of the illness convinces her it would be a good idea to get a tattoo, cut off her hair, and head to Mexico with a burly ex-con and a stash of OxyContin. As she wakes up in Tijuana, the "depressive" side kicks in, leading Suzanne through a series of surreal psychotic episodes before landing her in a mental hospital. With the help of her movie star mom, a circle of friends, and even her ex-husband, she begins the long journey back to sanity.

Based on a truant's story, The Best Awful is by turns highly comic and darkly tragic, a roller-coaster ride through the dizzying highs and crushing lows of manic depression, yet containing all the fast and furious wit that made Postcards from the Edge both a bestselling novel and a hit movie.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (December 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743269306
• ISBN-13: 978-0743269308
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #711,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, became an icon when she starred as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy. Her star-studded career includes roles in numerous films such as The Blues Brothers and When Harry Met Sally. She is the author of five bestselling novels, Wishful Drinking, Surrender the Pink, Delusions of Grandma, The Best Awful, and Postcards from the Edge, which was made into a hit film starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep. Fisher's experience with addiction and mental illness--and her willingness to speak honestly about them--have made her a sought-after speaker and respected advocate.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No bull, no boring roman a clef, just a gem..., January 6, 2004

By 

L Goodman-Malamuth "Leslie Goodman-Malamuth" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Best Awful (Hardcover)

Arthur Miller, the playwright, once said something along the lines of, "Agony, sure I have agony. But everybody has agony. The difference is that I take mine home and try to make it sing."

From Carrie Fisher, we get an aria, and quite a successful one at that. I was expecting to be entertained by The Best Awful, and I was, yet the novel is far more satisfying than Hollywood fluff. Whatever insights the author has earned through her turbulent/famous/funny life have given her depth and substance as an author. Fisher offers up sharp dialogue (not just a string of one-liners), a vivid but unpreachy view of mental health and its absence, and characters so real that I expected to see them sitting next to me on the sofa.

Wow.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, January 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Best Awful (Hardcover)

"The Best Awful" is wonderful, a compelling work whose humor belies a heartrending truth. In dealing with mental illness, Fisher doesn't sanitize insanity, but gives us a hard, unsparing look at what happens when a mind is lost, or rather, when it's found on an out-of-this-world plane. She takes us along a harrowing trip, harnessed to fast, furious, and funny prose. The strange thing is, it's a curl-up-under-the-covers read, a safe haven, where not only do you appreciate your own boring "normalcy," you develop a compassion you never knew you had. While Suzanne Vale's pain is so real, her rantings so over-the-detailed-top, it's her humanity that's still front and center -- an amoral ethicist pontificating on what it means to live a large life made larger by turning small. You have to read it to get that line! A beautifully done job. Fisher is a celebrity who truly deserves to be celebrated. And no, I'm not a friend, and until now, I wasn't a thumbs-up-to-the-sky fan.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poignant, funny look at bipolar disorder...very readable!, February 6, 2004

By 

Invisiboy2001 "invisiboy2001" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best Awful (Hardcover)

I have read all four of Carrie Fisher's novels, and this one is my second favorite, after the charming, hilarious "Delusions of Grandma." This novel includes many colorful central and secondary characters, but none as vibrant as Suzanne Vale, the bipolar heroine.

"The Best Awful" takes the reader on a roller-coster ride from the stability of everyday "sane" life through the perils of meltdown...and all the way to the loony bin and out again. Laced with Fisher's winning humor and alarming literacy, this novel is a winner from beginning to end. The ride will keep you laughing and leave you a little sad, but ultimately "The Best Awful" serves as a satifying read.