Look, Carrie Fisher is awesome, right? We can all agree on that? This book is a meandering mess of stories, with no clear thread to connect them and some pretty crazy turns towards the end. But Carrie Fisher is awesome, so you should read it anyway — for all of its hot mess-ness, it’s still pretty freaking funny.
“You see, even after decades of therapy and workshops and retreats and twelve-steps and meditation and even experiencing a very weird session of rebirthings, even after rappeling down mountains and walking over hot coals and jumping out of airplanes and watching elephant races and climbing the Great Wall of China, and even after floating down the Amazon and taking ayahuasca with an ex-husband and a witch doctor and speaking in tongues and fasting (both nutritional and verbal), I remained pelted and plagued by feelings of uncertainty and despair. Yes, even after sleeping with a senator, and waking up next to a dead friend, and celebrating Michael Jackson’s last Christmas with him and his kids, I still did not feel—how shall I put this?—mentally sound.”
The whole book is written like that paragraph. You can just see her holding court, probably sloshing around some wine in a glass at the same time. There’s really no structure to the book — she starts by discussing her shock treatments (hence the title), and then goes into some personal stories. The last chunk of the book deals mainly with her father — her relationship with him growing up, and how they tried repairing it in later years.
It may not be a great work of art, but she’s one hell of a funny broad.