Shockaholic

customer reviews

This rollicking follow-up to Carrie Fisher’s' New York Times bestselling memoir and Tony Award- and Emmy Award-nominated, one-woman Broadway show Wishful Drinking is packed with madcap memories from her star-studded life: her friendships with Michael Jackson and her once-upon-a-very-brief-time stepmother, Elizabeth Taylor; her dates (and brawls) with senators; and her love affair with electroconvulsive therapy. But it's also a tender chronicle of her rollercoaster relationship with her father, Eddie Fisher, whose unconventional approach to life -- to say nothing of parenting -- sometimes drove Carrie to the brink, but also taught her about the nature of family, and love.

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Book details:

Simon & Schuster |
176 pages |
ISBN 9780743298490 |
November 2011

$11.99 List Price

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Praise

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“Fisher is a girl who knows how to tell a story . . . she can make us laugh, she can make us cringe, but she can also teach a great deal about the power of forgiveness.”

– People (4-star review)

“[Fisher] never lets herself veer into woe-is-me-ism. With charming shamelessness, she conducts a brisk and witty tour of her life, delivering up her tragedies as a nonstop laugh riot.”

– Elle

“Hilarious.”

– Marie Claire

“There's no such thing as TMI in Carrie Fisher's world, and that's why we're hooked on her new memoir, Shockaholic.”

– Ladies' Home Journal

“Fisher's memoir Shockaholic, the follow-up to her successful autobiography and one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, is similarly witty, ramshackle, and outrageous.”

– Washington Post

“Fisher is, at her core, a very good writer who's able to keep us entertained. Fisher deserves praise for being up front about the [electroshock] therapy…If she wants to keep talking, we'll keep listening.”

– Los Angeles Times

“Hollywood's new poor little rich girl . . . continues her tour down the rabbit hole of Crazy Town, sparking us through brightly lit secret corridors while twisting self-deprecation into an art form. Fisher's wordplay is wicked,... ”

– San Francisco Chronicle

“Amazing . . . pretty fascinating stuff.”

– Rosie O'Donnell (Windy City Times interview)

“[Shockaholic] stands out beautifully from what has become the madding memoir crowd.”

– Buffalo News

“Fisher's word choices and comedic rhythm echo such literary comic masters as S.J. Perelman and Woody Allen . . . she proves the ripe adage that comedy really is tragedy plus time. Grade: A-”

– Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Carrie Fisher goes from pathos to punch line with a flick of her wit.”

– Louisville Courier-Journal

“Carrie Fisher is able to deliver a sage, self-deprecating tour of addiction, bipolar disorder, and her experiences with ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy) in a way that leaves readers feeling like she's your funny, cynical,... ”

– BUST

“[A] funny and sad memoir . . . tremendous wit, ample self-deprecation, and a thinly veiled and deep-seated anguish.”

– Publishers Weekly

“Fisher is a writer, an observer, and a keen one at that. Her way with words, even though she claims electroshock treatments have made her forget many of them, is raw and raucous.”

– Booklist

“Fisher writes with razor-sharp wit that is acerbic, insightful, and contemplative, all laced with a tenderness that will disarm even the most cynic reader.”

– TucsonCitizen.com

“Princess Leia Amidala Skywalker Solo strikes again . . . The one-liners keep coming and the temptation is to conclude that all this Gemutlichkeit is distancing behavior, but leave that to her army of shrinks and Dr. Feelgoods and... ”

– ShelfAwareness.com

“Shockaholic is shocking, but it's the emotional depths that are charged under the therapy's push that really makes this an interesting read.”

– BookReporter.com

“For those who are partial to Fisher's sharp and acerbic take on things, her sense of the absurd clearly derived from firsthand experience, Shockaholic . . . doesn't disappoint.”

– Blogcritics.org

“Shockaholic is a breeze to read: fast-paced and clever, funny enough to make you laugh aloud, and short enough to be read in one sitting. But the moments of insight, of clarity, of vulnerability that Fisher shares with the reader... ”

– LitReactor.com

“Fisher is a storyteller, very happy to make jokes at her own expense . . . Shockaholic will only enhance her reputation as Hollywood's unofficial amateur therapist.”

– The Guardian (London)

“Plenty more weird episodes are packed into [Carrie Fisher's] latest memoir, Shockaholic. . . . Some of the stories are heartbreakingly sad, yet Fisher makes them laugh-out-loud funny on the page.”

– Sunday Sun (UK)

“Modern American literature has an enviable tradition of wisecracking dames nursing broken hearts or fragile psyches dating back to Dorothy Parker. To that list we can add Carrie Fisher. . . . We are now well used to the kind of... ”

– The Telegraph (Belfast)

“Even if you're not a Star Wars fan, [Carrie Fisher] will have you laughing as she reveals her amazing experiences in Hollywood and beyond.”

– The Journal (UK)

“Fisher’s life certainly provides a wealth of colorful anecdotes. . . . But the real gold of the book comes in Fisher’s ruthlessly self-abnegating sense of humor.”

– AVClub.com

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Read an Excerpt

Oy! My Pa - Pa

I didn’t see my father all that much growing up, which resulted in him becoming a kind of mythic figure to me. I probably knew as much about him as some of his more rabid fans. I’d been told stories by other relatives of ours about how he would make plans to come pick up Todd and me and then not show up. This apparently occurred enough so that by the time I was three, when someone would tell me, “Your dad’s coming!” I would shrug as near to indifferently as possible and say, “Maybe.”

Several years later, after his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor had...