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  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. The author of five bestselling novels, including the sequel to Postcards from the Edge, The Best Awful, Fisher’s star-studded career includes roles in numerous films such as The Blues Brothers and When Harry Met Sally. In 2009, she was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Spoken Word Album for the audio edition of Wishful Drinking, which was a New York Times bestseller as well as a hit Broadway production. Carrie Fisher’s first novel is set within the world she knows better than anyone else: Hollywood, the all-too-real fantasy land of drug users and deal makers. This stunning literary debut chronicles Suzanne Vale’s vivid, excruciatingly funny experiences—from the rehab clinic to life in the outside world. Sparked by Suzanne’s—and Carrie’s—deliciously wry sense of the absurd, Postcards from the Edge is a revealing look at the dangers and delights of all our addictions, from success and money to sex and insecurity.

  CRITICS AND CELEBRITIES ADORE

  CARRIE FISHER’S UPROARIOUS

  NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

  POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

  “At once harrowing and hilarious.”

  —The New York Times

  “A sharply irreverent, deliciously witty trip through Hollywood-land.”

  —Jackie Collins

  “The sort of novel that makes you want to call your friends to read passages out loud.”

  —Women’s Wear Daily

  “Searingly funny.”

  —Vogue

  “An accurately sardonic, wonderfully detailed novel.”

  —New York Daily News

  “A single woman’s answer to Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, a less-sexual version of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, the smart successor to Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Postcards from the Edge percolates with a wry sense of self-deprecating humor that keeps Suzanne and the reader moving in the right direction. . . . An entertaining, thoughtful novel about insecurities not found exclusively in Hollywood.”

  —Nashville Tennessean

  “Carrie Fisher has a unique and startling voice. . . . A born writer! She is seriously funny.”

  —Mike Nichols

  “Carrie gives her protagonist the kind of humor born of pain, anger, and a strong will to live. The narrative voice is a bit like Holden Caulfield. . . .”

  —Time

  “Dryly comic . . . entertaining, often exhilarating. . . . Definitely ultra-hip.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Powerfully incisive and charmingly sweet. . . .”

  —United Press International

  “Fisher shows us the true plight of the mateless, smart, and neurotic character, familiar to us from Cynthia Heimel or Woody Allen; we also find the hip despair of Jay McInerney or Bret Easton Ellis, in this case a good-natured kind. . . . Postcards from the Edge is fun.”

  —Newsday

  “With surprising literary artistry, Carrie Fisher swims through relationship-infested waters, braves cocaine blizzards, glitz spills, sushi tsunami, and bon-mot attacks to show us what despair is like when it refuses to take itself seriously.”

  —Tom Robbins

  “Snappy dialogue, sensitive insights, and witty asides . . . Fisher . . . brings a real talent to bear on her depiction of Hollywood.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Tantalizing . . . funny.”

  —Columbia State

  “Surprising, hilarious, breathtaking, a wry and witty commentary on life in the fast lanes of Freewayland.”

  —San Jose Mercury News

  “A wonderfully funny, brash, and biting novel, the most startling literary debut since Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City. . . . This is a laugh-out-loud book.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Intelligent, original, focused, insightful. A serious piece of work.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  Also by Carrie Fisher

  Postcards from the Edge

  Surrender the Pink

  Delusions of Grandma

  The Best Awful

  Wishful Drinking

  First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition published in the USA in 2010

  This edition published in Great Britain in 2011 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 1987 by Carrie Fisher

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Carrie Fisher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London

  WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue copy for this book is available from the British Library.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84983-364-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-84983-365-3

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For my mother and my brother

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

  A BANQUET OF CRUMBS

  DREAMING OUTSIDE YOUR HEAD

  DYSPHORIA

  THE DATING ACCIDENT

  EPILOGUE

  Prologue

  BROTHER THOMAS,

  You know how I always seem to be struggling, even when the situation doesn’t call for it? Well, I finally found a place where my struggling fits right in: the sunny Middle East. Brooding and moping doesn’t seem overdramatic in Israel or Egypt or Turkey. Today I stood in a recently bombed-out train station. I looked at the charred, twisted metal and I thought, “Finally my outsides match my insides.” Maybe I should take a tour of the world’s trouble spots and really relax. See you soon.

  Love,

  Sister Suzanne

  DEAR LUCY,

  Okay, here’s what I think now. Ready? I have to establish an overall plan for my overboard life. When I cross the finish line of my twenties this fall and that thirty flag goes down, I’d like to be closing in on having some idea of whatever it is that my life is about.

  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far: a) I’ll get back into therapy, maybe with a woman therapist this time; b) I’ll stop coloring my hair and dye it back to its normal color—I’ll artificially go natural; c) I’ll only date people I really like, so I can feel like there’s some point to it; d) I’ll fix the eating thing; e) I’m going to slip my hand out of the comforting clasp of chemicals—No More Drugs. Also, get up early every day, read more, keep a journal, talk on the phone less, do less shopping and, eventually, have a child with someone. Obviously, the plan is in a really rough early phase, so I’ll keep you posted as this gets honed down.

  Honey, I’m honed.

  Your elfin buddy,

  S.

  DEAR GRAN,

  Yet another offering to add to your collection of my poetic works.

  Oh wow now

  I’ve d
one it

  I’ve made a mess

  I feel a fool

  I feel obsessed

  When we get to the good part

  Will I have something to wear?

  I know my heart’s in the right place

  ’Cause I hid it there

  I act so much like myself

  It’s a little unreal

  It’s a lot of work

  It’s no big deal

  My heart’s in the right place

  Ticking away inside my torso

  I’m just like other folks

  Only that much more so

  I remind myself

  Of someone I’ve never met

  Of someone I’d like to meet

  Of someone I can’t forget

  I’m not insane

  But I’m halfway there

  You can tell from the smoke

  Rising from my molten hair

  Follow me down insight road

  And I’ll show you the sights along the way

  I’m a flash and the world is my pan

  Have a nice day

  Give Granpaw a kiss if he remembers me. This is the kind of vacation I might need a vacation after. I’ll call you when I get home.

  Your ever-lovin’

  Suzanne

  Postcards from the Edge

  SUZANNE

  DAY ONE

  Maybe I shouldn’t have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares? My life is over anyway. Besides, what was I supposed to do? He came up to my room and gave me that dumb stuffed animal that looks like a thumb, and there I was lying in bed twelve hours after an overdose. I wasn’t feeling my most attractive. I’d thrown up scallops and Percodan on him the night before in the emergency room. I thought that it would be impolite to refuse to give him my number. He probably won’t call, anyway. No one will ever call me again.

  DAY TWO

  I was up all night with my head full of frightening, chattering thoughts, walking around and around the halls. After about the sixth spin I stopped waving at the night nurse and just kept my head down.

  One of the therapists came in to admit me and asked how long I’d been a drug addict. I said that I didn’t think I was a drug addict because I didn’t take any one drug. “Then you’re a drugs addict,” she said. She asked if I had deliberately tried to kill myself. I was insulted by the question. I guess when you find yourself having overdosed, it’s a good indicator that your life isn’t working. Still, it wasn’t like I’d planned it. I’m not suicidal. My behavior might be, but I’m certainly not. Tomorrow I get out of detox and start group.

  I hate my life.

  DAY THREE

  All of the therapists here seem to be former addicts. They have this air of expertise. Drug addicts without drugs are experts on not doing drugs. I talked to this girl Irene at lunch who’s been here two weeks, and she said that in the beginning your main activity is a nonactivity in that you simply don’t do drugs. That’s what we’re all doing here: Not Drugs.

  The woman who admitted me, Julie, is my therapist. I don’t know if I like her or not, but I want to like her. I have to like her, because the way she is is probably the way I’m going to be. I need to make an ideal of someone who did drugs and now doesn’t.

  Three people here—Carl, Sam, and Irene—have been to prison. We also have Sid, a magazine editor, and Carol, an agent’s wife, and several others whose names I’m not sure of yet. Most of them are here for cocaine or free-base, but there’s also a sizable opiate contingent. The cocaine people sleep all the time, because by the time they get here, they haven’t slept in weeks. We opiates have been sleeping a lot, so now we roam the halls at night, twitching through our withdrawals. I think there should be ball teams: the Opiates vs. the Amphetamines. The Opiates scratch and do hand signals and nod out, and the Amphetamines run around the bases and scream. There are no real rules to the game, but there are plenty of players.

  Tomorrow afternoon after the cocaine video, the nurse takes everyone who’s not in detox on a Sunday outing to the park.

  DAY FOUR

  It was nice being outside. You feel less like you’re being punished and more like a normal citizen. It’s hard not to feel like an outcast in a drug clinic, but then it’s hard not to feel like an outcast, period. I seem to be the only one here who had their stomach pumped. It’s an interesting distinction.

  Carl and I shared a blanket in the park. He’s a fifty-five-year-old black grounds keeper and a would-be ex-free-base addict. He looks like a burnt mosquito. I asked him how he could afford to be here and he said he’s on his wife’s health insurance.

  Carl talked so much in the park that I thought I was going to kill myself. His main topic, of all things, was drugs. He talked about cooking up the rock and the feel of the free-base pipe, and how he’d make enough money from Tuesday to Friday to free-base all weekend. I asked him what he took to come down, and he said he didn’t like downers. He said, “Shoot, those drugs don’t do nothin’ but constipate me.”

  The fat guy Sid seems really smart. He’s in for lodes. I asked him what lodes were and his eyes started to shine. When addicts talk about their drug of choice, it’s almost transcendental. He said, “You’ve been a downer freak and you don’t know what lodes are?” It turns out lodes are four strong painkillers combined with one weird sleeping pill, which produces an effect like heroin along with a stomach addiction, which Sid had. I can’t believe I missed that drug.

  The weird thing about all this is that I had been straight for months—the whole time I was filming Sleight of Head in London and all through my vacation. But then I got home and BOOM! four weeks of drugs. I hated it, I even wanted to stop, but I just couldn’t. It was like I was a car, and a maniac had gotten behind the wheel. I was driven, and I didn’t know who was driving.

  DAY FIVE

  I let Irene cut my hair today. It’s kind of horrible. She’s only twenty, and her skin is all broken out from PCP and heroin. I got so absorbed listening to her stories of blackouts and arrests for prostitution that I didn’t notice how badly the haircut was actually going.

  Julie is so cheerful I want to punch her. And two guys who get out of here next week, Roger and Colin, almost swagger. They’ve got it all over us, because they haven’t done drugs in almost a month. They really know how to not do drugs now. Big fish in a little rehab.

  I feel so agitated all the time, like a hamster in search of a wheel. I’m consumed with panic that everyone will find out about this and hate me, or laugh at me, or worst of all, feel sorry for me. Pity me for taking my Everything-That-a-Human-Can-Possibly-Be-Offered and turning it into scallops and Percodan on the emergency room floor.

  I can see where people would think that my life is great, so why can’t I feel it? It’s almost like I’ve been bad and I’m being punished by rewards—this self-indulgent white chick whose inner voice says, “Look how spoiled you are. Go on, have another great thing. What are you gonna do about it, huh? What are you gonna do about it?”

  The thing about having it all is, it should include having the ability to have it all. Maybe there are some people who know how to have it all. They’re probably off in a group somewhere, laughing at those of us who have it all but don’t know how to.

  The positive way to look at this is that from here things can only go up. But I’ve been up, and I always felt like a trespasser. A transient at the top. It’s like I’ve got a visa for happiness, but for sadness I’ve got a lifetime pass. I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere.

  DAY SIX

  This is hard—I feel like I’ve got bugs flying around inside of me. I called my friend Wallis today, and I tried to get the operator to say, “Collect call from hell, will you accept the charges?”

  After not feeling anything for years, I’m having this Feeling Festival. The medication wears off and the feelings just fall on you. And they’re not your basic fun feelings, either. Thes
e are the feelings you’ve been specifically avoiding—the ones you almost killed yourself to avoid. The ones that tell you you’re something on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and not even someone interesting.

  I talked to my agent and ended up in tears, which is not my favorite presentation of myself. Crying to my agent. I tried very hard not to, but I didn’t have a chance. I’ve used up all the Not Cry I was issued at birth. Now, it appears, it’s crying time.

  I talked to my mom briefly. I was afraid that she’d be mad at me for messing up the life she’d given me, but she was very nice. She said a great thing. I told her I was miserable here, and she said, “Well, you were happy as a child. I can prove it. I have films.”

  What went wrong between what she gave me and how I took it?

  DAY SEVEN

  How old do you have to be to get past caring?

  Sid looked over at me during lunch and said, “You look so unhappy.” I was sort of startled, since the picture of myself that I carry around in my wallet of a head is of a peppy, happy-go-crazy gal. I keep my eye on this picture when evidence to the contrary is all around me.

  How could I have gotten all this so completely wrong? I’m smart. I guess I used the wrong parts of my brain, though—the parts that said, “Take LSD and painkillers. This is a good idea.” I was into pain reduction and mind expansion, but what I’ve ended up with is pain expansion and mind reduction. Everything hurts now, and nothing makes sense.

  DAY EIGHT

  Drama in Drug Ward Six!

  Irene got kicked out of the unit for smoking dope in her room. She offered some to Carol, the agent’s wife, and Carol came to me crying and asked me what she should do. I told her we should turn Irene in, so we told Stan, the therapist who was on duty.

  Stan called Irene in, and she had this real defiant look on her face, like she’d been caught doing something noble for her country and now she was going to be killed for it. Carol was crying and I was sitting and holding her hand. Stan said, “Irene, we hear you’ve been smoking dope.” Irene said, “Well, I didn’t know where I was gonna be when I moved out of here, if I was gonna go to a halfway house or whatever, and I was confused so I smoked dope.” Stan said, “There are a thousand excuses and finally no reasons to do drugs.”