Book review: Shockaholic

FOR the self-proclaimed Over-the-Beverley-Hill Carrie Fisher, the term memoir is somewhat ironic. Though Fisher regales her readers with intimate stories, droll nostalgic sketches and her trademark witty repartee, her second autobiography comes with an unusual personal twist.

She is losing her memory. Having undergone ECT, more commonly known as shock therapy, the Hollywood actress is experiencing short-term memory loss.

You could be forgiven for thinking, as Fisher is a celebrated member of Hollywood’s literati, that Shockaholic is yet another excuse for a celebrity to present the world with a selection of carefully edited, personally edifying and career-enhancing anecdotes that enamour the world to their cause and boost their floundering publicity. Not so. Fisher informs us in earnest that she wants to record her life before she forgets it, with the hope that if she should eventually lose her memory, then at least she’d once had something funny to say.

Though the narrative has its faults, humour is certainly not one of them. In many ways, Shockaholic continues a trend well established in her earlier Wishful Drinking. Fisher’s talent for self-deprecation, shrewd observation and borderline narcissism is still wonderfully evident in this deeply self-reflexive narrative. Detailing everything from her parents’ artificial marriage to her relationship with Michael Jackson and his surgeon, the memories are explicit and occasionally shocking. She reveals how she stood up to a boorishly rude Ted Kennedy during a double date (she was on a blind date with Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd at the time), did drugs whilst bonding with her infamous father and was once pushed in a pool by Elizabeth Taylor, all without a hint of self-mortification. Her personal narrative never borders on self-flattery. There is no room for that in this painfully honest account of a truly unique individual’s life.

The reader is, however, offered a very rare insight in to the life of Hollywood royalty. At times, Fisher’s memoir is hopelessly scatty, with memories darting from one dark place to another, but her sharp talent with words creates the consistency that her subject matter occasionally lacks. She is dark but never disturbing, even when revealing the bone-breaking, nerve-testing dangers of electroconvulsive therapy and the effect that is has on both the patient and her family. Let’s hope she never fully loses her memory, and that we never forget that she is a seriously talented writer.

Overall, Fisher has offered a brutally honest account of the pressures of being part of a famous family, a teenage pin-up and a bipolar mother, and there is no doubt that it will shock. But as Fisher has more than proved, sometimes, shock can be therapeutic.

SHOCKAHOLIC

Carrie Fisher

Simon & Schuster, £14.99