Delusions of Grandma - Softcover

Carrie Fisher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684858037 ISBN 13: 9780684858036

Publisher: POCKET BOOKS (SIMO), 2005

Synopsis

Pregnant screenwriter Cora has taken to writing lengthy letters to her unborn child, and it's small wonder why. For that age-old script family values is looking like it needs a complete rewrite.

About this title

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.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Again mining Hollywood humor, actress/novelist/screenwriter Fisher's third novel--following Postcards from the Edge (plus screenplay) and Surrender the Pink--finds her still relying on smart talk over plot. Any reader who has read all three installments of Princess Leia's wars against addiction, tinsel values, and bossy mothers will beg her to focus hereafter less on emotional hairsplitting and more on story. The first two-thirds of Delusions of Grandma are not about Grandma, but about screenwriter Cora Sharpe's affair with Ray Beaudrilleaux, a somewhat younger Hollywood lawyer. She feels ``ill-suited to the mystery of being in a relationship'' and silly when they go out together; she'd rather not go out, but young Ray, so softspoken and compassionate, is a social hippety-hop. Most of the text covers their early romance and then eases into their breaking off--although Cora is pregnant. It's all talk, with enough wacky brilliance thrown in so that a screenplay is salvageable, perhaps with cameos for famous folk and Fisher friends like, say, Meryl Streep. When not doctoring, writing, or rewriting scripts with gay fellow scriptwriter Bud (whose flippance steals his every scene), Cora lives on the phone with her committee of close friends who tolerate her continuous self-analysis. Near the book's end, her mom Viv, a kooky retired costume designer, decides to abduct her aged father from a nursing home--he's suffering from Alzheimer's disease--and take him to his childhood home in Whitewright, Texas. And so pregnant Cora, Bud, and Viv entrain with Grandpa, who's out of it but comes up with some moving moments. The climax fades from the page, and the not very funny letters Cora writes to her unborn child move the story nowhere. Even admirers of Fisher's many skills will find this as vaporous as an HBO movie you wish you'd never watched. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: POCKET BOOKS (SIMO)
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0684858037
• ISBN 13: 9780684858036
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244