The Best Awful

Suzanne Vale, the Hollywood actress whose drug addictions and rehab rigors were so brilliantly dissected by Carrie Fisher in "Postcards from the Edge," is back. And this time she has a new problem: She's had a child with someone who forgot to tell her he was gay. He forgot to tell her, and she forgot to notice.What's worse, Suzanne's not sure she has what it takes to be the best mother to her daughter, Honey. She can't seem to shake the blues from losing Honey's father, Leland, to Nick -- the man who got the man who got away. Or maybe those aren't the blues, just more symptoms of her sprawling multi-symptom bipolar illness: an illness Suzanne can't bring herself to take all that seriously, no matter what her doctors say. (After all, how serious can an illness be whose symptoms are spending sprees, substance abuse, and sexual promiscuity?) And now, worst of all, under the watchful round eyes of the pills the doctors plied her with, even her friends are starting to find her a little...boring.The obvious solution is to take a little walk on the wild side. But what starts out as a brief gambol through the scary/fun world of twenty-first-century dating becomes a vigorous jog-trot through the latest drug wonderland -- and finally a wild gallop toward a psychotic break and a stay in "the bin."Based on a truant's story, "The Best Awful" is Carrie Fisher's most powerful and revealing novel: hilarious, moving, and fully informed by the wisdom of a true survivor.