THE PRINCESS DIARIST by Carrie Fisher (Penguin £8.99)
THE PRINCESS DIARIST
by Carrie Fisher (Penguin £8.99)
When Carrie Fisher died in 2016, aged 60, most of her obituaries dwelt on her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars.
But as well as being an actress accomplished enough to carry off a hairstyle resembling a couple of Danish pastries clamped to her ears, Fisher was a sparkling writer, who published several semi-autobiographical novels, including 1987’s Postcards From The Edge.
In this memoir, she returns to her role as Leia, which catapulted her to stardom at 19, prompted by the rediscovery of the diaries she kept while filming.
It is brilliantly entertaining: acerbic, witty and laced with crackling one-liners. Revealing for the first time that she had an on-set affair with Harrison Ford, she remarks: ‘My affair with Harrison was a very long one-night stand . . . I loved him and he allowed it.’
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Share THE COMPANY OF TREES by Thomas Pakenham (W&N £12.99)
THE COMPANY OF TREES
by Thomas Pakenham (W&N £12.99)
The historian Thomas Pakenham has made trees his life’s work: ‘I developed a passion for webpage trees,’ he writes, ‘and the trees responded.’
Pakenham lives at Tullynally Castle in Ireland’s County Westmeath, where he has developed an ambitious programme of planting, in the hope that ‘these trees will give comfort and pleasure to children yet unborn’.
This book recounts the events of a single year — 2013 — on the estate.
Atlantic storms felled the tallest of Tullynally’s beeches, while sweet chestnut, ash and horse chestnut fell victim to lethal new diseases.
But planting trees is an act of hope, so Pakenham patiently worked to restore what was lost: ‘I owed it to my grandchildren. And I owed it to the trees.’
THE UNDOING PROJECT by Michael Lewis (Penguin £9.99)
THE UNDOING PROJECT
by Michael Lewis (Penguin £9.99)
Michael Lewis (bestselling author of Liar’s Poker, The Big Short and Moneyball) now turns his attention to the relationship between psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, the ‘Lennon and McCartney of behavioural psychology’.
Lewis first encountered the pair in a review of his book Moneyball, and resolved to tell their story.
They met in Tel Aviv in the Sixties. While Kahneman’s intellect was wide-ranging, Tversky’s was fiercely focused. Both were geniuses.
Together, they studied the human inability to live with uncertainty and doubt — until their creative partnership began to crumble.
Lewis’s account reads like the best kind of fiction — pacy, intelligent and, at the end, heart-breaking.