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Simon & Schuster

Go Ask Alice (Anonymous Diaries) Paperback – January 1, 2006

by Anonymous (Author)

2,982 ratings

Part of: Anonymous Diaries (7 Books)

in Children's Drug-related Issues

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A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale.

January 24th
After you’ve had it, there isn't even life without drugs…

It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth—and ultimately her life.

Read her diary.
Enter her world.
You will never forget her.

For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl’s harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful—and as timely—today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.

Reading age

12 years and up
Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Grade level

7 - 12
Lexile measure

930L
Dimensions

5 x 0.6 x 7 inches
Publisher

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Publication date

January 1, 2006
ISBN-10

1416914633
ISBN-13

978-1416914631
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Anonymous Diaries Left Behind: Lucy in the Sky; Letting Ana Go; Calling Maggie May; Breaking Bailey by Anonymous Paperback $23.89
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Library Journal" An important book, this deserves as wide a readership as libraries can give it.

"School Library Journal" This novel in diary form powerfully depicts the confusions of adolescence. Its impact cannot be denied.

"The Boston Globe" ...a book that all teenagers and parents of teenagers should really read.

"The New York Times" [This] extraordinary work for teenagers is a document of horrifying reality and literary quality.

About the Author

A Simon & Schuster author.

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Product details

Publisher : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; 1st edition (January 1, 2006)
Language : English
Paperback : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 1416914633
ISBN-13 : 978-1416914631
Reading age : 12 years and up
Lexile measure : 930L
Grade level : 7 - 12
Item Weight : 5.8 ounces
Dimensions : 5 x 0.6 x 7 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
2,982 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		80%
4 star		10%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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CJFCL

Meh

Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2018

Verified Purchase

Tedious. Preachy. Obviously fiction. This may have worked to scare kids into not using drugs in the 1970s; I hope no one is relying on it to do that today. Basically, it’s a quaint, naive relic from the beginning of the “war on drugs.” I did give it an extra star in recognition of the fact that it probably read better decades ago than it does today.

40 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

I thought it'd be kind of boring now that I'm 56 yrs old

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

I first read Go Ask Alice when I was in middle school. My sister asked me to buy it for her~ so I did. I thought it'd be kind of boring now that I'm 56 yrs old. I was wrong!! It is even more meaningful to me now! I work with the public and see a LOT of drug addicted people. This book is so worth-the-read for every young person. I highly suggest reading this book!!

30 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kesnei

Not relevant to actual addiction and very outdated

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

WARNING: SPOILERS

As someone who works in the criminal justice field helping those in recovery, I was excited to order this book and read it. While I knew it was a YA novel, I figured it would be a relevant account of a teenage addict. However, upon reading the book, I feel like this is just another scare tactic aimed at teenagers to keep them from using drugs.

Rather than exhibiting a true account of what teenagers actually deal with, this book points out very irrelevant and outlandish outcomes of using drugs as a teenager (running away from home, having a bad trip, people bullying her, etc.) I also felt this book was very outdated. The world of drugs and addiction changes constantly; there are constantly new things hitting the streets. However, it seems the girl in this story is addicted to LSD and marijuana (obviously written in the 70s). Again, another scare tactic to keep teenagers from smoking weed. This book also plays on the "gateway drug" aspect that if kids try one drug, they will try them all, which is simply not supported in statistics of addiction.

I was looking forward to having a book to share with my clients, however, I will not be doing that. If you are a parent wanting to scare your kid into not doing drugs, this may be the book for you, although your kid will still inevitably try some drug at some point in their life. If you are someone like me looking for a true account of someone who struggled with addiction, this book is entirely outlandish.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Margaret Petrov

Wanna get high?

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

Another book from my childhood re-read recently. I did enjoy revisiting this as an adult, simply because it actually is a pretty funny book. Alice, the young protagonist/narrator has a drug problem, and goes from trying a bit of pot to hitchhiking to California and living in a drug pad with some nefarious junkies pretty quickly (yes, because it's really an Anti-Drug propaganda book written to sound like a young girl's diary).
It was entertaining, I love how almost every one of her sentences is punctuated by the word "man" and how she gets "caught up" in the drug world and laments about how much she hates not being high on drugs. It's not going to stop anyone from trying drugs, but Go Ask Alice is an interesting look at what adults in the 1970s thought their teenage children were up to, and the "Reefer Madness" of its generation.

26 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Pretty good, I don’t usually read books that were ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2016

Verified Purchase

Pretty good, I don’t usually read books that were written like a journal but I heard good thinks about it. It was a real page turner and kept you interested the whole time. The ending make you extremely happy until you flip the page and then find out what happens 3 weeks later. I sat there pissed off after I closed the book so the next day I looked up blogs about the book to get more information and I was extremely disappointed to find out that the book was actually fiction. At first the book left me feeling shocked that this was a true story and I totally believed everything I read and then when I found out it was fake It just makes the you feel like you were lied to. The ending pissed me off but finding out it was all fake pissed me off even more.

18 people found this helpful

Helpful

MelissaJean

but there were parts I liked so I went with three

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2015

Verified Purchase

Kind of wavered between giving this two or three stars, but there were parts I liked so I went with three. My boyfriend recommended this because he remembered reading it in middle school and thought it was awesome, though he did add as an after thought that he wasn't sure if he'd still like it or not. He's not a reader, so I figured it must be pretty good. After finishing it I realized that, had I read this in middle school, I probably would have loved it as well. Reading it now though, I can't say the same.

First off, I'm gonna say that you can't go into this thinking it was actually a real diary because it just simply is not. It's been ripped apart by people saying a teenage girl would normally ramble on more about boys and idle chit chat, but in the books defense who would actually read it then? It's clear it's not real, but let's be honest with the exception of Anne Frank, no one is interested in a reading a teenage girls diary.

It does have it's ups and downs, and I did get attached to the main character, but so many times I found myself wondering where it was actually going. It gets near the end and she's doing good and I was just happy with how things were working out for her. Then, in the last entry she just kind of adds, as an after thought, that she doesn't think she'll keep a diary forever because adults don't need to, even though she makes it clear she doesn't feel like an adult yet. Really just out of no where she mentions adults don't need to write in diaries and suddenly she's done. It felt like the author (Beatrice Sparks) wasn't sure how to end it/ got sick of writing and just kinda tossed that in there. And then there's the epilogue. And you're left with a, "where did that come from?" feeling. Again, she didn't work it in very well, and jumped from one extreme to the next.

This may be a spoiler so if you really don't want to spoil the ending don't read this part, but after the book ended I could think of only one thing. If you've ever seen the movie Mean Girls, during the sex ed. classes the gym teacher says "Don't have sex, you WILL get pregnant, and you WILL die." I feel like Beatrice Sparks is that gym teacher's mother. "Don't do drugs, you WILL die." That's really how sporadic the ending felt for me.

All in all, I didn't hate it, but it could've been done a lot better.

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Luna's Little Library

GAA was negatively influenced by the marketing before I started but I was hoping the content would win me round, it didn't.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2014

Verified Purchase

Go Ask Alice is a work of fiction. Yet it was originally promoted as nonfiction, it’s still sold as “by Anonymous” and the copy I have has “This is Alice’s True Story” on the cover plus the blurb on the back, the foreword and the Psychologist’s Comment at the back – everything is still packaged to make out this is nonfiction.

It got my back up. It is fiction and it should be presented as such.

The narrator is not likeable; I didn’t have any connection with her and found her rather whiny. Given that the point of this book if to warn of ‘what can happen’ I would have expected more empathy with the character. (Btw it’s never established what her name is.)

I know the book is over 40 years old but Go Ask Alice really feels it. A lot of the time I don’t notice age with books when I’m lost in a story but I don’t think the text has dated well. Maybe it’s partly to blame for the disconnect I felt to the character/story.

I’ll admit that my opinion of Go Ask Alice was negatively influenced by the marketing before I started the book but I was hoping the content would win me round – it never really did.

5 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Not non-ficiton

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2019

Verified Purchase

The writer had admitted that the work is not a non-fiction book as as advertised, but this should be fairly obvious just by reading the book.

The author is trying so hard to sound like a teenager who knows about drugs that it is hard to read. Just by reading the book you can surmise that the author has very little knowledge about drugs and their effects but has obviously convinced himself/herself that she/he is a hero for writing this piece of anti-drug propaganda.

The book is stupid in too many ways, I hope people don't take this book as being genuine as it would only fuel the propaganda. If you are looking for media texts which GENUINELY display and explore drug addiction I would recommend the films 'Spun' and 'Trainspotting' . These are just two LEGITIMATE texts but there are many more.

Don't buy this book unless you want to laugh at its stupidity (like you would at the famed film, 'Reefer Madness').

hfffoman

A badly written fake in the name of a good cause

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is the moving diary of a struggling teenager who gets caught up among drug users.

It is readable and it does help people to understand the dangers of drugs. Unfortunately it is a fake - it purports to be a genuine diary but is actually an artifice contrived to keep people away from drugs. I read it as a teenager and believed it was genuine. Years later I bought it for my children and read it again and found it so unrealistic and mawkish, it was obviously fake (which I confirmed with a bit of research). Once you realize it is not genuine the book suddenly becomes apparent as tendentious trash and even if it had been well written deception is the wrong way to educate people, even for a worthy cause.

9 people found this helpful

Roxie

Left me somewhat numb.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2013

Verified Purchase

I'd heard a great deal about this book and figured I should give it a go. A hell of a lot slimmer than the books I'm used to and not really a subject I need much schooling in. This kinda snapped my heart in two. Normally I read these stories and think, "I knew someone just like you and they were insufferable." For once I felt myself connect with the main character, it was wonderful when she was happy and heart wrenching when certain things happened, (I really don't want to give too much away) You should read this, no matter your age. It's not the most accurate portrayal, nor the best written, but it's worth your time.

8 people found this helpful

Alicja41

Favourite book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is my all time favourite book I have ever read. It’s written beautifully , I wish the ending was different it’s so sad. It makes you want to jump through the pages and rescue her at times but such a different story line and energy to the book than other similar ones about drug addiction.

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