From the Bookshelf of CSS 8.3 and 8.4…

Go Ask Alice

Beatrice Sparks (as "Anonymous"),

Carlo Corsi (Translator),

Anonymous,

Selçuk Budak (Translator)

Why we're reading this: Novel Study, Assignment 1
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Nov 13, 2013 Victoria Bishop rated it liked it

"This will be a good trip. Come on, relax, and enjoy it". Go Ask Alice is a diary of a real girl living in America. It starts when Alice, the main character, is served a soft drink that is laced with LSD in a sketchy party game. Within a few months, Alice is hooked on drugs and trapped in a world that takes her away from her warm home and loving family, to the dangerous streets of a dangerous city. "After you've had it, there isn't even life without drugs". Her journey steals her innocence, her "This will be a good trip. Come on, relax, and enjoy it". Go Ask Alice is a diary of a real girl living in America. It starts when Alice, the main character, is served a soft drink that is laced with LSD in a sketchy party game. Within a few months, Alice is hooked on drugs and trapped in a world that takes her away from her warm home and loving family, to the dangerous streets of a dangerous city. "After you've had it, there isn't even life without drugs". Her journey steals her innocence, her youth, and ultimately her life. The story of a teenage girl plunged into the nightmare of drugs is a powerful story that gives us a look into her world and insight into the horrors of addiction. Alice's downward spiral ends in a tragic way, with a tragic death. "A compelling story... a pointed and explicit firsthand picture of life within the drug culture...has the ring of authenticity" (Booklist). The mood in Go Ask Alice is powerful and intense. The message this book is sending, the lessons this book has and is telling you about is powerful and intense. Alice's detailed story of her world after she started drugs, with a day by day of what happens and what she was feeling. This book shares about struggles with teen addiction and social struggles of the drug world. The intensity of Alice's stories, the way she has to leave her hometown, leave her family to get away and make her life better. This book lets you see that once you enter the world of drugs, there is no way to get out; it follows you everywhere you go. Alice leaves her hometown to go to San Francisco, because she wanted to start fresh. But she was drawn back in, back into the drug world. One time you use, one time will change your life. Alice was mixed up in the wrong crowd, a crowd that didn't care about Alice or her future, they just wanted her so she could do business for them, and they got her hooked.

In this book I really liked how it was a true story and they didn't modify the book a whole lot from what Alice's original diary was like. The diary was mostly all of what Alice actually wrote down. I enjoyed how they gave us such a detailed look into her life and what she experienced with being involved with drugs. I think that it is a really good book for teens to read about the dangerous world within drugs. This book opens up peoples eye to dangers and the consequences of getting into drugs. Go Ask Alice goes to show that using one time, can change your life forever. Even though she didn't use on purpose, she decided to not go and get help, she decided to try and get better herself, but temptations didn't let her move on and start a new chapter in her life. I really liked in this book how they gave us a day-by-day update of what her life was like. Every day for Alice in this book was different. One day should could have been happy in her home, when the next day she is leaving her home town to go start fresh. Because this diary was a diary of a real girl and her real life experiences, makes the book more believable and more realistic with the experiences. Though this book does have some times where it is more unbelievable then believable the book is still overall a good book. One thing I didn't like about this book was how naive Alice was about so many things that happened to her. Closer to the end when Alice thought she was doing well, but then she ate the LSD laced peanuts and was found pulling her hair out in a closet. Alice in this part of the books seems naive to a certain point. It was a bit strange at the end of the book when it says "The subject of this book died three-weeks after her decision to not keep another diary". It seems that statement is implying the diary is the only thing that kept her sane and together as a whole. This book seems to be designed around the idea of scaring kids away from drugs by telling them a story of a girl that had tragic things happen to her. I didn't like how a few things in this book seemed fake and fabricated.

My overall impression of this book is that this book sends a powerful message and is a good book for teens to probably read. Though a few of the things in this book seem to be fake and fabricated, the most of the content in this book is really what a 15-year-old girl lived and experienced. I think this book would be enjoyable for most ages of people. For younger kids, this book might be a little bit intense with the extreme detail.

Go Ask Alice was a mind boggling, powerful book about the temptations of our world and the dangers of drugs and how it can effect your life, and send you in a down word spiral resulting in ultimately, your life. This book pulls you in and keeps you interested through all of her ups and downs through her high school days. The struggles that is book was showing seemed real and they seemed to be struggles that kids in high school do experience with the pressures of drugs and peer pressure. Alice did not willingly take drugs, she was served a laced coke in a sketchy party game. But, she did not try and fix herself she thought she could do it without help but she couldn't and she refused to receive professional help.

-Victoria B. 8.3 ...more

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Nov 18, 2013 Edna marked it as to-read

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