Six Degrees of Separation: Post Cards From the Edge by Carrie Fisher

I haven’t read this book, so here’s the summary from Amazon:

“When we first meet the extraordinary young actress Suzanne Vale, she’s feeling like “something on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and not even someone interesting.” Suzanne is in the harrowing and hilarious throes of drug rehabilitation, trying to understand what happened to her life and how she managed to land in a “drug hospital.”

Just as Fisher’s first film role—the precocious teenager in Shampoo—echoed her own Beverly Hills upbringing, her first book is set within the world she knows better than anyone else: Hollywood. This stunning literary debut chronicles Suzanne’s vivid, excruciatingly funny experiences inside the clinic and as she comes to terms with life in the outside world. Postcards from the Edge is more than a book about stardom and drugs. It is a revealing look at the dangers—and delights—of all our addictions, from money and success to sex and insecurity.”

 

The first book that came to mind combined generations of womanizing, stardom, sex appeal, power, the liquor and movie industries, and drug use., rehab, good and bad family dynamics, egotistical and entitled behavior, and more. Chris Lawford, son of Rat Pack legend Peter Lawford and nephew of President Kennedy, endured virtual abandonment as an infant—the stink of diapers and the noise of a crying baby ruined life for Peter who had to be up early in the morning looking gorgeous, so Chris and his nanny were exiled to live in an apartment not far from his parents’ home. Right. It was kind of downhill from there for him. In spite of this, he developed an amazing ego, ferocious arrogance, and a major-league sense of entitlement. And the obligatory rich-kid-of-my-generation’s drug habit. I threw this book across the room several times, but I collect books on the Kennedy family so I did finish reading it. Moments of Clarity by Christopher Lawford.

A Hollywood child who had an addicted mother by whom she would likely have preferred to have been abandoned was Christina Crawford. Actress–mother Joan was addicted to her own image of herself, a narcissist. Mommy Dearest.

The child of a narcissist who now speaks about a very well-connected narcissist is Lady Colin Campbell. While I love her YouTube videos, she really should ditch her ex-husband’s courtesy title. She was divorced from him in the mid-’70s after less than a year of marriage.

Someone else who had a husband’s courtesy title was Lady Browning, aka Daphne Du Mauire whose husband, General Sir Frederick Browning was nicknamed “Boy” and was part of the Royal household. Interestingly, one of her daughters married a man who became a General and the other married the son of one of the most famous generals–Field Marshall Montgomery.

General, later Secretary of State Colin Powell, had an eccentric hobby and relaxation technique. The  General who, like  Prince William, was a Geography major, rose through the ranks of the ROTC and did not attend West Point. He calmed himself and relaxed by working on old Volvo cars in his garage.

Ova preferred Saabs, but his best friend was a Volvo man. He wasn’t a general but, the author is named Frederik. And, if I remember correctly, Ova did do his national service. Ova was “addicted” to trying to commit suicide out of loneliness after his wife passed away. A Man Called Ova by Fredrik Backman.

Why not join in next month? The first Saturday of the first full week of the month. You can read all the rules here.