Go Ask Alice

Publisher's Summary

Life at 15 isn't easy for a girl if she's shy and hates the way she looks. Each day is heaven or hell, depending on who talks to her, or who doesn't. So when she's finally accepted by a group, she doesn't refuse their party games, even if it means taking LSD. Soon she's taking little pills to wake up and others to go to sleep, and the days begin to blur. Leaving the secure, middle-class circle of her family, she travels into a nightmare realm of hustlers and dealers. Homeless, driven by drug highs and lows, she sometimes tries to regain control over her life. But it's much easier to just get high again.

Based on a 15-year-old's diary, Go Ask Alice is the intimate account of one girl's fatal journey into the world of drug addiction. Poignant and unflinchingly honest, her story is a tragedy that is repeated in towns and cities across the country.

©2006 Lee Smith (P)2006 Recorded Books LLC

Critic Reviews

"An extraordinary work....a document of horrifying reality." (The New York Times Book Review)

Hit home

I dropped out of college and am a nomad so I really identified with this book.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

WE WERE ALL LIED TO. THIS IS FICTION PEOPLE!!!

Words cannot describe how angry and betrayed I felt after realizing I wasted a credit on a book that is a complete LIE. I was promised to be purchasing a 'TRUE' story from a 'REAL' 15-year-old girl's diary but this is nothing more than drug propaganda of the 70's and Beatrice Spark's Mormon agenda. THAT IS THE TRUTH PEOPLE. YOU WERE ALL FOOLED.

I realized it was fake before I even did the research. No one (not even in the 70's) used language like "flabby-flab flab" "great great great!" not to mention the RIDICULOUS timeline events!!! She sticks a needle in her arm immediately after one accidental drug encounter? Oh, and of course she talks about being scared of pot AFTER using Heroin? I DON'T THINK SO. She magically goes from being scared of everyone in her school to having drug connections and a sex life? All in 18 MONTHS?!? WTF!!! How did anyone buy this as real?

I can't believe this is legally sold as non-fiction in the year 2014 when back in the 70's the real author came forward admitting "some of it" to be her work. Beatrice Sparks was a Mormon youth counsellor who was mistaken labelled a "Dr."(although she earned no doctorate) and sold this story for a profit. She later wrote "Jay's Journal" which was based on yet another 'TRUE' story and what she did with that one is unforgivable. It was based on the journal of Alden Barret who was a 16-yr-old boy who committed suicide. Alden's parents gave Sparks the journal and trusted her to get it published but she butchered his character instead and twisted it into her own Mormon-taught propaganda about satanism. She ruined lives for money. If you read Jay's journal you would also notice that both 'Alice' and 'Jay' use the same messed up jargon such as "quick quick quick" because it's the voice of Sparks NOT any real teenager.

This personally offends me because as someone who uses a diary and has experience with real addiction it is WRONG to call it real. Well intended or not, I want my credit back and for God's sake, change the book's description!!!!!

54 of 75 people found this review helpful

Thankfully it was free

What total bullshit. The review requires fifteen words. The first sentence repeated should cover it.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

making my 14 year old read.....

life lessons and consequences. .. loved this book when I first read it over 20 years ago

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Wonderful & insightful views!

What a wonderful insight on what an adolescent goes through with the struggles not only with drugs but trying to quit, fit in and feel understood by peers and adults around her. It's a very sad story but I am so glad it was shared so I can be more aware and available not only to my own children but others as well.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Very Compelling, Very Interesting, A Sad Story

Any additional comments?

The story will leave you feeling sad and feeling sorry to the surely millions of teens/females that experience lives such as the young dairy writer of the story.

You want to be able to wake her up from her addiction, until you realize it's just that... addiction. She can't be brought out of it, save intense therapy surrounded by familial support, etc... which would take years.

This is a good read, but beware: there are some very adult things that happen to this teen, sexually, emotionally, and abusively.

6 of 9 people found this review helpful

terrible

talk about dumb an boring no wonder the author wanted to stay anonymous don't buy

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Oh Give me a Break! This is propaganda

I hadn't questioned the legitmacy of his book when I downloaded it. I only vaguely remembered the title. Half way in I thought.. this is garbage.
The black and white judgements, the "evil" drug doers, and the "great" squares. The glorification of the nuclear family- The leap from one innocently taken drug, down the road to an institution and fatality in 18 months.
It's like "Reefer Madness"

At least, like many drug scare stories from that era, she killed herself.she didn't throw herself from a window thinking she could fly.. or jump off a roof after smoking pot.

Her diary is non sensical. She explains discrepancies that would only matter to an audience.
Ie: how she can write even though her hands are bandaged. Also how she ended up in the institution is written retrospectively- Someone in that much pain and hallucinating would not be able to or bother writing such verbose grammatically perfect sentences even if she did imagine someone would some day read it.
After I finished listening to it I researched and found that it is likely an adult invention.

I believe books like this do more harm than good.
If a young person tries drugs and realizes that the horror stories are baloney, and that "clean" people can do heinous things and users can be kind gentle, and productive, how will children respect or believe anything they are told?

39 of 65 people found this review helpful

real and hard to put down

very realistic. you feel like you are experiencing everything with her. really sticks with you

final summation

hope it is infact a true story and not some fabricated anti-drug crap snootchie bootchies