Book Review: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher’s intimate, hilarious and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Wars movie.

When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a (sort-of) regular teenager.

With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. And today, as she reprises her most iconic role for the latest Star Wars trilogy, Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience.

My Review: 
This is the last of the Fisher diaries that I read, having looked at them all in the space of 24 hours because the three were all very short reads. I had high hopes for this one because it was a diary kept during the filming of Star Wars and there had just been the revelation in the media about her off screen affair with Harrison Ford. I was looking forward to this one but I admit that like the other books, I was disappointed by this one.

The book starts with a monologue talking about the things that appeared in the diaries themselves. Carrie goes to be interviewed for two films at the same time-the part of Carrie for the Stephen King film, and of course Princess Leia. She admits that her performance at the audition contained endless nervous chatter and she was surprised to get a call back to read with Harrison Ford. She talks about how long it took for them to find that iconic hairdo, how she never expected the film to be a huge hit and how she was so nervous around Ford that she tried to avoid him when they weren't shooting scenes together.

The main issue running through the book, as expected, was the affair with Harrison Ford. He was in his thirties and reaching the end of his marriage, while she was just 19 with only one boyfriend previously in her life. She talks about how they actually got together and frankly it was a very sinister story involving crew members getting her drunk at a party and trying to take her away from the studio, with Ford stepping in to stop this happening. Carrie seems to recall this incident without much alarm but I find it quite disturbing and can't help wondering if any of these crew members are being investigated in the current sexual harrassment/assault Hollywood purge.

The next stage is where to me the book falls apart-the actually printing of her diary pages. Her thoughts are completely undiluted here and to be honest, some of what she was saying was confusing and incomprehensive. Her obsessed state with Ford is like part hero worship where she could barely speak to him, and part destructive emotion where she is aware that this is not a good relationship for her. Her mood swings are there but most of the material is actually hard to read because you can see how depressed and anxious her mental state was, and how she was struggling to keep it together. It was sad and a little unsetting. She also writes a lot of poetry, which I skipped past as I'm not a poetry fan.

 I actually found the initial descriptive narrative interesting enough to read as Carrie was able to give a clear report on what she had previously written. I didn't like the actual diary part of the book which is why it is rated 2 star. 

Read January 2018
2 stars.