Book review: Delusions of Grandma - embracing motherhood

Author: Carrie Fisher

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Scribner UK

Excerpt

‘Mama, I needed to ask you. Is there…I mean, can you remember anything that I might need to know that would help me to have a child?’

Viv smiled and rolled over onto her back. Cora was struck by how young and pretty her mother looked, like some freshly scrubbed country girl. With makeup, she was a beauty, from any angle. But now she looked like someone who ran barefoot through train cars, ignoring shoe imperatives and wishing on sunset and stars. Her eyes glittered in the dark, filled with secrets she wanted to tell. But all she said was, ‘You’ll know just what to do, Cora. You’re just like me — you hold it all inside until one day you have an ulcer. But you always know just what to do.’

Cora squirmed. ‘But Mama — ’


‘Like with your friend William — you knew what to do with him  — you told me so.’

‘Yeah, but  — ’

‘There is no real difference. When you love someone  — when they’re family  — you do whatever you can to make them feel better, to do what’s right for them ’cause they’re that important to you. Like with Grandpa, we’re taking him home, right? ’Cause that might be where he wants to go. It’s not important in a way if he gets there  — it’s that we’re taking him. And your being there for William, or for Bud, when he’s unhappy  — it’s all the same. That’s the instinct you count on when you have a baby. That’s really truly all.’

The story opens with an allusion to a (in)famous Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times.’  To the script doctor, Cora Sharpe, this curse by no means implies that she will have an interesting life. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. According to her, an interesting life does not normally encompass the “interesting times” invoked by the afore mentioned curse.

Cora was eight and a half months pregnant  — the consequence of an impassioned and emotional sexual relationship with her ex-beau, Ray, a lawyer. Concerned that she will not survive childbirth — a paranoia spurred by her mother and the baby’s grandma-to-be (hence the book’s title)  — she begins to write letters to her unborn child. She wants that her child be handed over the letters, later on in life, by his/her father. Meanwhile, she recollects past events and scenarios which eventually lead to her currently-distraught period of gestation.

Despite being a successful and famous screenwriter at home and abroad, Cora found herself at a loss when it comes to her relationships. Hers has always been a “big, loud life” full of interesting (pun intended) occasions such as a failed marriage and recurrent one-night stands and transient affairs (eleven in number, to be precise, before she meets Ray).

Having been raised with a disdain for lawyers coupled with a disbelief in her ability to have a relationship, ironically Cora finds herself in a stable marriage with a lawyer. Yet, she suffers with the subsequent failure of making her marriage work with a doting partner such as Ray. They do, however, reunite after breaking up, only to permanently call it quits.

When Cora’s friend William, seriously ill with AIDS, comes over to her, Cora realises that she needs Ray as her “quiet counsel” more than a lover. However, she already begins to see things from his point of view and as a result, she pities Ray for feeling neglected.

As the former lovers watch William embrace death, they are left closer to each other. During the same phase of turmoil, their baby arrives. But as usual, their romance expires while the revelation of her pregnancy leaves Cora drenched in an adrenaline rush as she is faced with the tough decision to adopt a more mature attitude as she embraces motherhood.

Carrie Fisher, the author of Delusions, writes this partially autobiographical account of a single mother (who Fisher herself is), in a vivid manner which makes the reader empathise with the protagonist Cora Sharpe. This compassion later transforms into a feeling of sympathy for her tentativeness (a word which the author uses quite often in the story), without the reader even knowing it.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2011.