I've now read two Carrie Fisher books and I've loved them both. She is…was such a superb author chock full of quotable lines.
This novel is structured differently to anything I've read so far (which isn't saying a great deal) starting as postcards, then as a she says/he says diary, then as "typical" third person. The book itself is also split into parts that remind me of an indie movie from the 90s (which I think it actually became) whose style is very much a monologue of the protagonist.
I really enjoyed following along the character of Suzanne Vale. The only chapter/part I struggled a little with was Dysphoria, which felt much more like a gossip paper about Hollywood - it's not that it wasn't good, just that some of the reference and lifestyle was a little beyond my being able to connect.
All in all though, I love Fishers prose and I love that reading on the Kindle lets me highlight as I go along (37 highlights from this book!).
34 Highlight(s)
I'm not insane But I'm halfway there You can tell from the smoke Rising from my molten hair
When I got back to my room, there were flowers from the guy who pumped my stomach. The note said that he could tell I was a very sensitive person. I'd have to be sensitive to need all that Percodan.
My first party without drugs. Interesting. I mean, when I was a little kid I always went to birthday parties straight, but that was a while ago.
I love what speed and coke do to my weight. It's unnatural, I know. I could just exercise . . .
They only just made it illegal, so how bad could it be? And they haven't even said it's bad for you.
Most of the people I've admired in show business—comedians, writers, actors—are alcoholics or drug addicts or suicides. It's bizarre. And I get to be in that club now. It's the one thing I cling to in here: Wow, I'm hip now, like the dead people.
I rarely cry. I save my feelings up inside me like I have something more specific in mind for them.
I'm starting to think Suzanne may be a little bit of a snob. What does she think, that she's too great to talk to me? I mean, all right, sure, maybe I haven't talked to her, but
Forget it, I'm gonna do what I want to do now, or what they think I want to do. I'll just do what they think I want to do now.
Some might call it a challenge, others a sentence.
"Actually, I'm a failed anorexic," she said. "I have anorexic thinking, but I can't seem to muster the behavior."
It's this new thing I've been saying lately—I don't mean to quote myself, but if I don't, maybe no one else will.
Now I'm just into looking, not finding. Winning, not the prize. And the prize is the winning, maybe just the three minutes when you've actually won. That's why the sweetness of the sexual contact is perfect, but it can only be a disappointment afterward.
I don't even think, 'This time it's going to be different' anymore. I think, 'This time it'll be the same, in a different way.'
"When he didn't call me back, I decided to call him and tell him not to even think about ever calling me again.
Why am I alone? Well, I'm not alone, I'm with you, but really I'm not with you, so, in effect, I'm alone."
"She calls us the Mind-Fuck Twins," she said. "She says I'm feasting on a banquet of crumbs."
What does your therapist think?" "I don't let my therapist run my life," he said. "You know, I go in, I talk to him . . . I think of him as a good bounce. Mainly I go to hear myself think, and sometimes I'll discover something through what I say. I've been seeing him for a lot of years, and we did most of the main thrust of the work on my early family stuff in the beginning. Now it's just . . . It's like going in for a brushup, like teeth-cleaning.
He led her to a long trailer consisting of a row of doors, each of which had a name on it. "And this, of course, is your—" "My hamster cage," Suzanne interrupted cheerfully as she surveyed her allotted space.
It was a question she had asked herself about men. She had finally decided she wanted stimulating that very subtly became calming—a holocaust that became a haven.
"You had these big brown eyes and you were always going, 'What's that? What's that?' You wondered what everything was. You would frown and point a lot, like a conductor looking for your orchestra.
You had to grow up fast because of the divorce. That was hard, but it happens to lots of people nowadays. Of course, it's easier on children when it doesn't, but there's no use going over that.
"See, I don't understand that," said her grandmother. "This is what I don't understand about your generation. You just stop getting along? You've got to work at getting along. It has to be something you care about, a priority."
She paused, looking for the right words. "Sometimes I'm afraid I'm happy, but because I expect it to be something else, I question the experience. So now, when in doubt," she shrugged with true bravado, "I'll assume I'm happy."
Her diets lasted until about four thirty in the afternoon, when she couldn't stand it anymore and ate something absurd
When she was twenty-one she had written in her journal, "I narrate a life I'm reluctant to live."
I just want you to feel something, in between all this talking and thinking that you do. I want you to lead a life instead of following one around."
"Guys are great before you know who they are," said Lucy. "They're great when you're still with who they might be."
"We'll be like those Indian women who go into the forest to have babies," said Suzanne, "only we have no forest, we have no babies, and we're not Indians. Otherwise, the resemblance is stunning."
she'd come up with a new message for her answering machine—"I'm out, deliberately avoiding your call"—and that simple burst of creativity had raised her spirits a bit. "My mood is lifting," she said, "like a small, heavy plane."
"Let me just tell you this one thing. You look great and I gave the guy my number. It's been a breakthrough night for both of us. Now we can go and have some French fries and doughnuts and really live life."
"You think that if it isn't dramatic, nothing is happening," Norma had told her. "The idea is to get old with them, not because of them.
One morning, while driving to the gym, she suddenly panicked. "I'm going to die," she thought. "I'm going to be killed in a car crash." Her hands gripped the wheel and she slowed to the speed limit. Suzanne was convinced that now that something nice and regular was happening to her, she was going to die. Whereas she used to hasten her death through substance abuse, she now feared for her life because she had reason to live it.
Sometimes, though, I'll be driving, listening to loud music with the day spreading out all over, and I'll feel something so big and great—a feeling as loud as the music. It's as though my skin is the only thing that keeps me from going everywhere all at once.