The Best Awful : A Novel
I'm a huge Carrie Fisher fan. OK, not so much her movies, but I love her writing, and her talk show is one of the most interesting talk shows on television, when it's on. Which appears to be almost never, but I rarely watch TV and I don't have Tivo so how do I know?
Anyway, The Best Awful picks up the life of the lead from Postcards from the Edge, as she tries to make life be fun and interesting despite heavy anti-depressant medication. It's a view of life through the eyes of somebody who has, as they say, "gone off her meds."
It's at the same time a hard book to read (I hate reading about people doing things that are so obviously not a good idea, because it disturbs my sense of order) and a quick read (I read it in the first half of a direct London-San Francisco flight), and it leaves you with a feeling of momemtum built up, so if there had been another book after that one I would have just picked it up and read it the rest of the way (instead I had a different book, which was not as captivating so I'm not writing about it now).
I liked Suzanne, the main character, and despite not having experienced the situations myself, I could understand her feelings about her ex-husband (who had left her for another man) and her feelings about being dependant on medication to keep her brain in order. That's skilled writing, kids: not just being able to tell a story, but being able to tell it so that everybody can feel it themselves, even if they haven't been through it. It's all fine and good to reject a criticism of a character by saying, "but if you'd ever been through this, you would know how true it is," but really great writers take you through it, so you know how true it is.
So if you're looking for a good novel that's not too light and doesn't require you to have an advanced degree in literary analysis, The Best Awful is a good bet.
# Posted by ayse