Hi there!
Welcome to our April Finale for Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking. Our Finales are a final look at our month's read and the themes and plot lines that run through the novel. Thanks for joining us!
Trigger Warning: Drugs, Sex, Alcohol, Mental Hospitals, Hard Drugs, Addiction
Overall
The rest of this novel was a little more focused and story-driven than the first half. It was also less sarcastic and more centered on Carrie's marriage to Paul Simon, her time acting in Star Wars, and her substance abuse issues. She sees the humor in everything so that she can deal with it, mostly because she has to. If she had not dealt with her issues through humor, she would have been killed by her addiction and she would have just become a statistic. She also had a great support system including her mother, father, and Cary Grant.
She admits that she lived a privileged life, but we'd like to say that a lot of people point out the negative, and she comes right out and admits that she had an easy-going childhood. We respect that in her because it shows that she isn't trying to take away anybody else's suffering to make space for her own, but is instead admitting that she was lucky to have grown up the way she did. Some celebrities will tell a sob story, but Carrie's admission of a privileged life is down to earth, and not out-of-touch at all with her audience.
Being Leia
Talking about Star Wars is something that Carrie seems to revel in. She is happy to bring happiness to others, but at the same time, she's found the balance and seems baffled by the commercialization of Leia and her image, as well as the explosion of fame that she experienced. She didn't seem to mind being a Pez Dispenser though, and was able to see the hilarity in her over-produced toy versions of herself.
We appreciated that we learned some cool set facts from Star Wars, but we were less interested in her stardom and more interested in her personal life. Once she began talking about the Star Wars experiences she had, we read it as fast as we could to get to the real content.
Marriage to Paul Simon and Raising Billie
When she meets Paul Simon, she mentions that he was her magic person. Which we think is very very adorable. After how she describes him, we were surprised by how messed up this relationship seems. This seems like a relationship where the fire burns hot, but the love is a little warped. They struggled a lot.
Their arguments shocked us - the hurtful things they said to one another go beyond a healthy relationship - and we can understand why they ended up splitting. The song lyrics contributed to this too. They were not sweet - they were real and harmful. They showed what Paul was thinking deep down.
When Paul met Willie (Carrie's ex), and they had differing political views, it made us wonder if having a relationship with Willie would have changed things.
That being said, Paul and Carrie were together for twelve years, but the delivery in the book makes it seem like the relationship was mostly struggling. This relationship was crazy because Carrie went to the doctor and was diagnosed with hypomanic depression- so she stopped talking to her doctor, and went ahead and married Paul Simon a week later. This impulsive and manic action was taken in order to fill the devastated hole inside of herself. She says it herself - she wanted to be good enough. This is the content we wanted. It sounds more like an auto-biography and this is the moment we've been waiting for.
Carrie's last serious relationship was with Billie's dad, Brian, who turned out to be gay and left her for a man a year after their child was born. They met a week after she and Paul broke up. Carrie doesn't mention that she has hard feelings about it, but who knows - if this is a stand-up comedy show, we don't know what she's really getting into for the nitty-gritty. Brian claimed that her going back to drugs turned him gay, and we posit that he likely said this to upset her on purpose, but it's a sad situation all around nonetheless.
Billie's birth announcement was quite bizarre - but enjoyable- go read it. We can see that Carrie and Billie have a good relationship as far as it is written in this novel, but Billie isn't mentioned a ton beyond Carrie's parenting woes.
Cary Grant & Drugs
Around this time in the book Carrie began to really talk about her drug use. Their summer home renters left a bag of weed there, and Carrie's drug use began with her mother trying to facilitate pot use in a safe space. Later, as she began filming Star Wars, her opiate, and hard drug use increased until her mother and father both spoke to Cary Grant (Carrie's Idol) to touch base with Carrie and dissuade her from using. They spoke three times. We found this absolutely hilarious and bizarre. And then their interaction in real life was so embarrassing and we loved it.
When Carrie signed herself into the mental hospital and signed "Shame," we found that sad. We know addiction is difficult. Seeing that she ended up in AA says something too. And seeing that she ended up doing ECT to help with her issues, leads us to believe that Carrie is a fighter, and she even says she had four or five slips in 23 years. That's impressive to us even though she felt incredibly disappointed in herself about it.
Conclusion
Having listened to this as an audiobook, Brieanna found it comedic because it was essentially performed to her. Ceraya found it harder to enjoy because reading it in a written format was far less funny. We do wish that this read more like a book because it is so clearly a show and obviously wordy when you have a lot to talk about (and Carrie clearly does base on her portfolio of books). That being said, we recommend listening to this audiobook or watching the Show or Documentary Itself.
With love, see you soon!
Ceraya & Brieanna
Comments