‘I don’t think you can even call this a drug. This is just a response to the conditions we live in.’

Suzanne Vale, formerly acclaimed actress, is in rehab, feeling like ‘something on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and not even someone interesting’.

Immersed in the sometimes harrowing, often hilarious goings-on of the drug hospital and wondering how she’ll cope and find work back on the outside, she meets new patient Alex.

Ambitious, good-looking in a Heathcliffish way and in the grip of a monumental addiction, he makes Suzanne realize that, however eccentric her life might seem, there’s always someone who’s even closer to the edge of reason.

Carrie Fisher’s bestselling debut novel is an uproarious commentary on Hollywood the home of success, sex and insecurity – and has become a beloved cult classic.

‘This novel, with its energy, bounce and generous delivery of a loud laugh on almost every page, stands as a declaration of war on two fronts: on normal and on unhappy’ Stephen Fry

‘A single woman’s answer to Nora Ephron’s Heartburn . . . the smart successor to Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays’ Los Angeles Times

‘A cult classic . . . A wonderfully funny, brash and biting novel’ Washington Post

'A wickedly shrewd black-humor riff on the horrors of rehab and the hollows of Hollywood life' People

'Searingly funny' Vogue