An amazingly candid biography of the remarkably candid-and brilliant-Carrie Fisher

In her 2008 bestseller, Girls Like Us, Sheila Weller-with heart and a profound sense for the times-gave us a surprisingly intimate portrait of three icons: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. Now she converts her focus to one of the most loved, outstanding, and iconoclastic females of our period: the actress, writer, child, and mom Carrie Fisher.

Weller traces Fisher’s lifestyle from her Hollywood royalty about Carrie Fisher: A Lifestyle on the Edge roots to her untimely and shattering loss of life after Xmas 2016. Her mom was the spunky and adorable Debbie Reynolds; her dad, the heartthrob crooner Eddie Fisher. When Eddie ran off with Elizabeth Taylor, the scandal thrust small Carrie Frances into a bizarre limelight, gifting her with an irony and an aplomb that would resonate throughout her lifestyle.

We follow Fisher’s acting career, from her debut in Shampoo, the hit movie that defined mid-1970s Hollywood, to her seizing of the plum woman role in Superstar Wars, which catapulted her to instant fame. We explore her long, complex romantic relationship with Paul Simon and her fairly peaceful years with the skill agent Bryan Lourd. We witness her startling leap-on the pumps of the near-fatal overdose-from actress to highly praised, bestselling author, the Dorothy Parker of her place and period.

Weller sympathetically reveals the conditions that Fisher lived with: serious bipolar disorder and an inherited drug obsession. Still, despite crises and overdoses, her life’s work-as an actor, a novelist and memoirist, a script doctor, a hostess, and a friend-was prodigious and unique. As one of her best friends said, “I almost desire the expression ‘one of a kind’ didn’t can be found, because it pertains to Carrie inside a deeper way than it applies to others.”

Sourced by friends, colleagues, and witnesses to all or any stages of Fisher’s life, Carrie Fisher: A Life within the Edge is an empathic and even-handed portrayal of a woman who-as Princess Leia, but mostly as herself-was a feminist heroine, person who died at the same time when we need her blazing, curing honesty as part of your.