Customer Reviews

Go Ask Alice

5 star:		(885)
4 star:		(236)
3 star:		(84)
2 star:		(36)
1 star:		(104)

 

 

Presumably the diary of a teenage drug addict, GO ASK ALICE was first published when I was in junior highschool. It was widely distributed at my school, and the faculty urged the students to read it for an accurate portrait of the horrors of drug use--and read it I did. At the time I was very, very impressed by the book. But that was almost thirty years ago. Today I am 40 years old, and I am a much more critical reader than I was when I was 12. And my thoughts upon rereading this book are quite different than they were when I first came to it.

The obvious issue here is whether or not the book is what it purports to be. Upon re-reading it, I find myself willing to believe that GO ASK ALICE is indeed the diary of a teenage drug user--but I also think it has been heavily re-written in spots to intensify its anti-drug agenda. I base this observation on two points. First, whenever the book describes drugs or their effects, it suddenly changes tone and becomes very, very specific in a way that the other entries are not. Secondly, the descriptions it offers re the effects of certain drugs are exactly those you would expect of a non-drug-user writing with reference to studies available in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This does not change the fact that this is a good book for young teenagers to read. The literary merit is zero--but that is not the point; the point is, as it always was, that casual drug use is simply not a good idea, and it places you in a situation where one thing can easily lead to another without the user being aware of the drift or having concious control. But it is also a book that needs to be read with responsible adult imput, for some of its content may need qualification. Ultimately, although dated and perhaps not quite as honest as it at first glance seems, it remains a powerful tool in any parent's anti-drug arsenal.

"Go Ask Alice," the tome so gloriously expounded upon by four-hundred and forty-four readers below, is a fictional account of a teenager's descent into drugs. It is "edited" by Dr. Beatrice Sparks. Now take a moment, Amazon shopper, and do a search for "Beatrice Sparks" under "Books." As you can see, Ms. Sparks knows a quite a few anonymous teenagers, each of them with a different malaise. Whether it's Annie (pregnancy) or Nancy (date rape/AIDS), Jay (drugs/Satanism) or Jennie (pills), or even Sam (gang violence), Ms. Sparks covers it all.

At the age of eleven, reading this book was a terrifying gateway into nethers of teenage existence. Now, at the age of nineteen, it has become a relic of the American War On Drugs; an antiquity like Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaigns or the "D.A.R.E." program. Like most anti-drug literature, it's well meaning, but inconsistencies ultimately get the upper hand.

"Go Ask Alice" reads like a pulp conspiracy novel, with the subject "tricked" into addiction by her friends (acid in the Cokes at a Party) who will stop at nothing to make sure she keeps taking drugs. The amount of drugs consumed throughout the book would have made Grace Slick nauseous. The climax is equally laughable.

David Toma had it right when he said that the most important factor in keeping kids off drugs was the unconditional love and care of a family. Maybe Ms. Sparks should have written a book on that instead.

---- For those who can stomach a truly candid book about drug use, seek out "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs. For those who lack the patience to actually READ a book, watch Soderbergh's "Traffic."

I don't mind people liking this book or gaining something from this book, but many of the adult reviewers here seem hellbent on promoting this book as either as either a major literary work or as an actual diary depicting the horrors of teen drug abuse. It is neither. I think it does potential readers, especially teen readers a true disservice to promote this book in either way. If you're doing this, you are not being honest.

It is NOT a real diary. It simply is not. It is a work of fiction created by Sparks. She continued this path - soap opera in diary form in a full-out series of books warning teens about the consequences of bad behavior. Don't believe me? Go to the Snopes Web site (you know, the one that confirms or dispells urban legends, rumors and out-and-out lies?) and read about Go Ask Alice. The researchers there confirmed that It is a work of FICTION written by SPARKS (not "Anonymous") as if it were a real diary. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, as long as teens aren't being told this is a girl's real diary. That would be a lie. I don't believe in lying to teens, regardless of how noble you think the cause. Interesting note - Sparks, who is now in her eighties - was (maybe still is, I don't know) a member of the Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints church. She wrote books that promoted the values of her church (obey your parents, clean living, etc.) - she just seemed to forget that annoying little commandment "Thou Shalt Not Lie." Apparently, there was even a 1979 musical inspired by "Alice" follow-up "Jay's Journal" that focuses on Spark's promoting fiction as fact, taking advantage of "Jay's" family (there actually was a "Jay," but most of the book about him was fiction) to enhance her own career, etc.

BTW, note to English teachers - if you're having your students write papers on this book (there are better books out there), make sure the papers aren't plaigerized from the net. I was amazed at how many "lift this paper" versions of Alice book reviews I found. A tipoff is that most, if not all, spoke of Alice as being a wonderful, emotional, true account of a teen struggling with drugs. If students actually research this book, they'll know it's fiction. Of course, being an English teacher, you already should know it's fiction, right?

There are books that give true, harrowing accounts of what happens when you use drugs. This is not one of those books. This book is a didactic soap opera - a cautionary tale written in a highly dramatic, unrealistic way. It is not particularly well-written, not great literature, but it's written in an emotional, dramatic, edgy (for it's time) way to draw in teen readers. Judging by its popularity and the doggedly admiring reviews here, it's been very successful.

I don't mind this book or its format, but I do have a tremendous problem with it being promoted to teens as something that it is not. Enjoy it as a work of fiction, realize that drug users generally have very sad, wasted lives, use it as a way to realize you should "just say no," whatever. But realize it's basically a fictional soap opera or an after-school-special in fake diary form. If you understand that, then by all means, read and enjoy. Don't use drugs and don't lie to people. Both are nasty habits to have.

It is downright shameful that this is passed as legitimate diary entries. The first time I read it it felt completely contrived and dishonest and extrememly preachy. I did some research. Turns out the "editor" Beatrice Sparks has "edited" dozens of "anonymous diaries" that all have that same exaggerated theme. And also now she is required to label her "anonymous diaries" as fiction, because they are. What becomes predominantly clear is that she is entirely uniformed about the situations and settings she is writing -oh excuse me- EDITING. I understand that she has written these books to scare children and instill paranoia into parents, and while her intentions are possibly positive, unfortunately the book will work against her intents. As soon as yonger people influenced by her book discover the world of drugs to be nothing as described in her "diary" that they will ignore the negative hype and embrace the drug culture more so than they would had they simply been told the truth.

My apologies for the moralizing, I'm glad I read the book, it is a bit of a "cult classic" (which label I'm sure Beatrice abhors) but don't be fooled, it is fiction, religious propaganda and misleading.

I first read this book when I was 11 or 12. At that time, I would have rated it five stars. And it did have an effect on me. It made me feel that drugs were evil.

But now, I've spent some time in the real world. And upon re-examining the book I find holes big enough to drive a truck through, blatant lies and propaganda, and a central message that I simply don't agree with.

So drugs are bad. Fair enough. But I don't think anyone deserves to be lied to by a diary that is clearly not a diary and supposedly true events that never could have happened. Teach your children not to abuse drugs. But don't rely on this extremist falsification to do your job for you!

This is NOT a true diary of a 15 year old drug addict. This was written by an older woman who clearly has no idea about drugs and being young because anyone who knows anything about drugs knows you cannot overdose on acid and pot. You also do not become a prostitute and addicted after ONE hit! Acid and pot are not addicting AT ALL, it is sickening this woman made so much on this book when it isn't even believable.

When I saw the book I thought it was a real diary but reading just the first entry and the extremely wishy washy verbiage and vocabulary is cleary not from a 15 year old, it sounds like a 40 year old TRYING to sound like a 15 year old. And then once I got to the part about the acid in the coke, I KNEW this book was fake. First of all acid takes 30-60 minutes to kick in, NEVER does it just take a matter of seconds. And again you do not turn into a junky after a hit of acid, you don't even turn into a junky after one hit of HEROIN, you have to have done it continously to form a habit. If this woman wanted to keep kids from doing drugs, she would have had a better chance doing some actual RESEARCH instead of flat out LYING and EXAGGERATING. Don't buy this book, it is a waste of time.

Look, I know I shouldn't be saying this because this book is the IMPORTANT BOOK to keep children off of drugs, but it's pure drug hysteria. It's one of those books that you read before you even know anyone who drinks beer and it scares you. Later on, you take drugs anyhow especially when you realize that your potsmoking cousin has yet to shoot up with heroin. By making a huge issue out of drugs, it undercuts it's message and renders it useless. False notes include:

"Alice" being tricked into taking acid: Acid's expensive. Acid's also easy to freak out on, and if you are with someone whose tripping that isn't liking the experience, it's going to ruin your evening. Usually when people take acid for the first time, their friends make sure that they are not going to go paranoid.

Dealing to school children: Why would 10 year olds want the stuff? They've all been indoctrinated in the "Drugs kill little kids" paranoia. If you were dealing to elementary kids, you'd be lucky to get out of the playground alive.

Being raped by heroin addicts: Heroin kills all sexual urges. Nothing more to say there.

Shooting up after being on acid for awhile: People don't go comparison shopping for drugs. People tend to settle on what they like. I was a pothead in college. My friends were drunks. We usually didn't mix and match and I only know a few people who even tried smack or cocaine.

Being tricked back into Acid: This had to be the most ridiculous scene in the book. Alice is babysitting. She eats the candy in the dish. It's Acid. She goes nuts. Huh? Did her friends break in when she wasn't looking? Did the nice young couple that hired her do it as part of the DRUG CONSPIRACY! Is this the magical Acid that doesn't fall apart at room temperature. Besides that why would a drug addict want to actively recruit other addicts. Drugs aren't plentiful. If someone wants to stop using, you let them. It leaves more for you.

It would have been so much more realistic if "Alice" had tried to hang out with her old friends and realized that they had nothing in common and that made her want to go back on drugs if only to have something to talk about with them. The evil drug addicts who try to get their lost sheep back into the fold is the stuff of Moonies, Scientologists and Christians - not drug fiends.

I could go on but I won't. All in all, this is a silly melodrama, with a lot of drug myths strung together in order put fear into the hearts of teenagers. If you want to read a REAL diary about drug addiction - read THE BASKETBALL DIARIES by Jim Carroll. It's urbane, realistic, funny and blisteringly evil. It shows the pure horror of drug addiction from the perspective of a punk kid who doesn't realize how horrible life is getting for him until it's too late. He's not a whiner like "Alice" and he's not making excuses for himself and there's no "He died of a heroin overdose isn't that sad" shock ending. The movie is Disney-melodrama, but the book is pure brilliance.

For other books about drug addiction try Please Kill Me: The Oral History of Punk, Trainspotting or even Naked Lunch.

If you want to know what drug addiction is really about then don't read the literary equivalent of Reefer Madness.

In all fairness, it would be wise of me to acknowledge that I know the public is becoming increasingly aware that _Go Ask Alice_ is not, in fact, written by the book's protagonist, but rather by one Dr. Beatrice Sparks (whose own undoing came later in the form of her 'editorial' involvement with the utterly ludicrous _Jay's Journal_). Any halfway decent book review should be about the content of the book and not the author's quasi-surreptitious lifestyle; however, the nature of _Go Ask Alice_ makes this separation nearly impossible.

The _Go Ask Alice_ story, when broken down to its core, is relatively believable: an undistinguished girl in high school falls in with the druggie crew at her school, ends up dropping out and running away, and gets trampled underfoot in the grand machine of society. If Sparks would have stuck to her guns and attempted to write this book in a voice that her protagonist might actually have used, then the book itself would have been somewhat more passable when approached from the "literary validity" standpoint. However, Dr Sparks is incapable of a) writing without being often-ridiculously preachy, and b) making matters worse by attempting to weave said preachiness into the Alice character through her reactions to incomprehensibly melodramatic situations. For example, Alice, when babysitting, consumes some candy in her babysittees' house. Miraculously, the candy is revealed to have been laced with acid by her hell-bent-on-corruption druggie pals who have nothing to do with the babysittees, and would have had to break into the house with the sole intent of lacing the specific candy (which they knew Alice would eat) with acid, then sneak back out without having left any signs of their involvement. Alice's reaction is a mixture of over-the-top goody-two-shoesism ("I'll never hang around those icky, evil people again, ever!"), completely unrealistic naivete ("But maybe they just want to show me cool things."), and awkward religious allusions ("God wouldn't want me to, or would he? Maybe God is LSD..."). (Dr Sparks, being heavily involved in the religious right, has extreme difficulty approaching religion from any moderately average mindset, as evidenced in her meisterwork, _Jay's Journal_, a book in which a boy gets into several unintentionally hilarious, preposterous situations involving "Satanism" and the "Occult" which are tipsy with the unmistakable ring of extremist Christianity.)

So what on Earth could be the saving grace of this novel, being nearly entirely devoid of literary grace or believability? The answer immediately becomes apparent when one considers the audience for which _Go Ask Alice_ was written. The Young Adult market is teeming with massive numbers of angst-ridden, pubescent adolescents, and reading a story so unbelievably melodramatic and bombastic as this--which is touted as a TRUE STORY by ANONYMOUS, no less--not only interests them, it becomes their raison d'etre. Should I seem to be patronizing, all one has to do is examine the other 300-odd reviews of this book, which include not only hundreds of teenagers saying that this book was the "greatest and most amazing" thing they've ever read, but also one girl who has made it her _life's goal_ to find out who "Alice" really is. Preposterous? Absolutely. Surprising? Not at all, if one takes the character of adolescents into account.

Because of that, Sparks has written an adolescent masterpiece, full of angst and fifteen things for young adults to brood and marvel over on every page. Whether or not _Go Ask Alice_ will head directly to the trash when said adolescents reach eighteen is a completely different matter.

This is probably not the first great hoax in publishing history, but I'm sure it's one of the most successful.

In spite of the fact that the actual source of this book has long been revealed and known, the publishing company continues to brazenly assert that this is a genuine document. It's as ridiculous as the continuing insistence that The Amityville Horror is a true story, too.

It should take any literate adult no more than one and one half pages to determine that this is neither the language nor the syntax of an adolescent/young adult.

It is a known fact that this shameless propoganda was the work of Beatrice Sparks, a Mormom activist who created an entire series of these books, in which children are destroyed by the evils of homosexuality, premarital sex, drug abuse, satanism, etc.

Without diminishing what positive impact this book, or any of the others, may have had on impressionable youth, and without condemning its good intentions (is anyone in favor of having AIDS?), these books are complete rubbish.

Like Mr. Frey, the intentions are not the point.

The point is that these books are being published as nonfiction.

And they are lies.

Go Ask Alice is not the diary of a real-life teen.

Instead, it is ham-handed propaganda; a highly-fictionalized conglomeration of case studies ("editor" Dr. Beatrice Sparks was one of the writers who worked on it). Additionally, _Alice_ is poorly written, with attempts at "groovy" teen slang and "relevant" issues that were laughable even back when it was first published, in 1971.

If the ugly truth about drugs like speed and heroin isn't enough to keep kids off of them, then I don't think that lying will be any help.