Subtitled "A sort of memoir...", this book recollects Carrie Fisher's time on set filming Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) – or Star Wars, as it was simply known back then. The main focus is her affair with co-star Harrison Ford. She was 19. He was 33 and married with children. The first 100 pages are highly entertaining, written by the older Carrie looking back at her younger self with all of the wit and wordplay of her excellent novels and previous non-fiction books.
There then follows 68 pages from her journals of the time. These are full of self-conscious teenage angst and poetry and don't make for especially compelling material now. They lack detail of who did or said what, instead examining her emotions and fears. The entries aren’t even given dates. If you are reading this for behind-the-scenes Star Wars gossip, you will be disappointed. These pages are more interesting for the way they chart the development of Carrie Fisher as a writer: by this point she was still to learn all of the tics and tricks that would make her prose sparkle. We learn surprisingly little about Harrison Ford, other than that he was quiet, aloof and possibly even a little dull.
The final third of the book is the most fascinating. She describes how it feels to "be" Leia, the character people seem unable to separate her from, and is acutely aware of her fickle, fading fame. She's especially good when discussing the excruciating sci-fi fan conventions she reluctantly began to attend, selling autographs and meeting admirers. It would be easy for her to have savaged her slightly deranged followers, who often tell her their life stories and detail her impact on their formative years, but she learns to regard them with gratitude and humanity.
What's missing from the book is any reference to working with Harrison Ford again in the Star Wars sequels. Was it awkward? How did they get on? What happened when they had to become an on-screen couple three years after splitting as a real-world couple? And what about when the series was revived for 2015's The Force Awakens and they found themselves acting together again? Shortly after this book was published, Carrie Fisher died. With Ford preferring not to comment on their relationship, this slim book may have to be the last word on the subject.
On page 48 there's a photo of Carrie and Harrison – or “Carrison”, as she calls them – smiling together. They look impossibly young and beautiful.
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