Carrie Fisher’s new memoir, THE PRINCESS DIARIST, is an intimate, honest work. If you’ve ever read one of her previous books --- or even a few of her tweets --- you know that her funny, half self-deprecating/half brutally authentic voice is what draws you in. She’s not princessy in the traditional sense, but if you know her as most people do from the mega-narrative of Star Wars, you know that Leia is not necessarily a traditional princess either. She’s snarky and smart, with a sense of humor and just plain common sense. Leia redefined and continues to redefine princesshood in many ways, and Fisher’s memories revolutionize how we might think of an actress who attained fame playing a princess.

THE PRINCESS DIARIST does so much work at once. Her writing is light with levity and something nearly too cynical to be called nostalgia, but not quite critical enough to be hindsight. It delves into poignant truths about what it is to be a young woman thrust into farther and farther reaches of fame: pressure, objectification and commodification included. It’s centered on diary pages that Fisher wrote while on set in the ’70s, hence the name, but it includes her present-day reflections on those pages, as well as beautiful behind-the-scenes photos that will delight any Star Wars fan. Fisher discusses growing up as the daughter of famous parents, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. She recounts her crushes on gay men, her tendency towards the inaccessible. She reveals the caveat that she was to lose 10 pounds before playing Leia, which she never did.

"This is a moving, beautiful and sincerely incisive work. She’s so much fun, and so much more human than any of us...can begin to imagine. I’m so grateful for this authentic, brave book. For young women everywhere, Star Wars fans, and the people who love or live with them, THE PRINCESS DIARIST is a must read."

Arguably the biggest reveal here --- certainly the one that’s received the most attention since the memoir’s publication --- is Fisher’s affirmative confirmation of Carrison. Yes, she had an affair with her co-star, a married father, her on-screen lover Harrison Ford. After hedging a firm answer for decades, she explores the experience here. The details aren’t lewd by any imagining, though --- the farthest from it. I read my copy before any articles came out about the “scandal” of her reveal, and was shocked to find that readers came away from this book with any judgment of Fisher. Of either of them, honestly, but especially of her. For starters, the facts: She was 19 and a film novice; he was in his mid-30s and experienced in every sense of the word. Secondly, the affair happened and ended circa four decades ago (and she did check in with Ford before publication), so it seems fair to imagine that both of their lives have continued satisfactorily. It seems a strange secret to take to the grave if it isn’t damning anyone.

And most crucially, for this reader, Fisher’s sections on Ford --- both in her diaries and in her present-day recollection --- are so powerfully, sincerely evoked. If there’s anything cruel or exploitative going on here, it’s expertly masked by what reads as pure earnestness, perhaps wistfulness, and retrospect. Not wistfulness in the sense that she wants him back, not in the least, but of perhaps who she would’ve been, the loves she may have had, if she wasn’t cast alongside a Hollywood heartthrob at 19. She was a kid. She was swept up in something so massive and magnificent. She was a young woman in the ’70s, being told that her cuteness and sex appeal had to be balanced with badassery to best sell to consumers of any gender, and she found someone --- someone right there, her literal space soul mate --- whose fame, standoffishness and appeal made him the perfect validation for her at the time. They shared a space of fame and fantasy that no one else (save, admittedly, Mark Hamill) could truly understand. She had only had one boyfriend before.

Her poems, the excerpts from her princess diaries --- they cut, in the good way. In the way only raw, candid writing can. They are perhaps the best parts of the book. She loved him, in the way we love things that burn us like the sun --- not the sort of lasting love we learn to develop for things that grow, that we can actually touch. Her entire pastiche narrative of Carrison feels like something she needed to write, to remember, to share. I came away from this book full of love for Carrie Fisher. She is far more of a queen than many princesses, and I’m shocked by anyone who can come away from this read without wanting her to be their best friend, if not their cool aunt. Yes, she had the affair. I’m more scandalized that anyone could be scandalized by her sensitive, honest recollection. The only villian in her story is the sexist structure that continues to reduce her to Leia’s bikini body, and to fault her for the consensual actions of a grown man.

The most encompassing narrative of this work is really the central tension of everything, arguably, that any of us think we know about Carrie Fisher: Who is she outside of Leia? Where does Carrie begin? Is it where Leia ends, or is there a sort of inescapable Venn diagram between Leia and Carrie, and most of us only know to recognize the overlap, when there are really two discrete people there --- and only one of them is actually real? She asks this a number of times throughout the book --- “Who do you think you would’ve turned out to be if you weren’t an intergalactic princess?” --- and at last answers: “I’d be me. You know, Carrie. Just me.”

This is a moving, beautiful and sincerely incisive work. She’s so much fun, and so much more human than any of us (except probably her dog, Gary Fisher) can begin to imagine. I’m so grateful for this authentic, brave book. For young women everywhere, Star Wars fans, and the people who love or live with them, THE PRINCESS DIARIST is a must read.