In the summer of 1985, Carrie Fisher received a letter asking if she’d like to write a book. At the time, the 28-year-old actor wasn’t at home, nor was she on a set. She was halfway through treatment at New Beginnings rehab centre in Los Angeles. Fisher, whose role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars trilogy had recently catapulted her to A-list fame, had been losing control of her drug use. Months before, she had accidentally overdosed on tranquillisers and had been bundled, unconscious, into the front passenger seat of a car by three friends and rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where her stomach was pumped, saving her life.
The invitation couldn’t have been better timed. Not only did she want to write a book, she already knew what the first line would be, inspired by her recent ordeal in the emergency room. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares? My life is over anyway,” Fisher deadpans in the opening pages of her roman à clef, Postcards from the Edge, a razor-sharp book about addiction and mental illness that is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. It’s a novel that still dazzles and provokes, even today – and paved a way for Fisher at a crossroads in her life and career. Fast, erudite, and searingly funny, Fisher’s kamikaze tale of a Hollywood actor’s adventures in and out of rehab took her vulnerabilities by the scruff of the neck and shook them onto the page. From cocaine binges and AA graduations, to toxic first dates and absurdist Hollywood brunches, what keeps readers returning time and time again isn’t simply the novel’s tell-all honesty – it’s the author’s satirical lens.
