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A review by empressmolly
Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks
0.5
What a crock of bull.
Obviously not written by a teen in the late 60s, and I think anyone with beyond a sixth-grade level of reading comprehension could see the clear phoniness of this. The antidrug propaganda (a cause I'm not unfavorable toward) was so strongly interlaced with conservative social beliefs (the main character feeling homosexual-ish desires and questioning society when she was on drugs, then discussing how she wishes she could be desired as a pure clean wife for her future husband when she was sober) that it was difficult to get through such thick rhetoric without laughing. Maybe the best way to get through it is by reading it as a comedy.
Besides that, this book is supposed to be about drug use, but the way drugs are discussed is so removed from the reality of an addict's life. The following spoiler may or may not be a spoiler since it happens so early in the book.An unintentional LSD trip was your gateway drug? Really? And that made you immediately want to do more drugs? On page 35 she writes "I simply have to see if [pot] is everything it's cracked up not to be! All the things I've heard of LSD were obviously written by uninformed, ignorant people like my parents who obviously don't know what they're talking about," which sounds like an adult trying to write about a bratty teen. But that's not all, because she immediately goes to try "torpedoes on Friday and Speed on Sunday." Speed as in meth. A few days after acid she shoots up meth.
After she graduates to harder drugs, she only writes about doing meth and heroin once and then never mentions any urges/cravings again? The entire book has no mentions (or a few if you read some parts generously) of the addicitve powers of dangerous drugs at all, and instead focuses only on LSD and marijuana. Actually, the book inaccurately depicts LSD as an addictive drug, which is crazy since if you're going to write propaganda for kids, why would you misinform them? I know pot is addictive, but LSD is not and it's been known to not be addictive for decades. As The Paris Review writes, "As antidrug propaganda, it’s so misinformed as to defeat its own purpose ('Anyone who says pot and acid are not addicting is a damn, stupid, raving idiot, unenlightened fool!')."
Lastly, I picked up on strong Christian overtones in this book (like when the narrator went to a church and was saved and ended many chapters with prayer, even saying once that praying gave her "the sweetest feeling" of her life), which I found I was right to notice since the author of this fake diary and others Beatrice Sparks was a Mormon counselor and had another "diary" accounting a young man's dangerous foray into Satanism—which, as we all should know by now, was never a real movement at all.Actual spoiler (unless you read the back of the book)The author's message of "turning to God to help you with drug addiction" felt kind of undermined by the death of the narrator. If turning to God would fix her troubles, why wasn't she saved? Was she making a case that this girl wasn't a true believer? This should probably be answered by a much more knowledgeable scholar but when I read it I just thought it was kind of slimy all around.
If there is even a sliver of truth or a single case this was based off of, I am sorry to that individual and their family for having what was sure to be an emotionally devasting time in their lives told with such carelessness.
Obviously not written by a teen in the late 60s, and I think anyone with beyond a sixth-grade level of reading comprehension could see the clear phoniness of this. The antidrug propaganda (a cause I'm not unfavorable toward) was so strongly interlaced with conservative social beliefs (the main character feeling homosexual-ish desires and questioning society when she was on drugs, then discussing how she wishes she could be desired as a pure clean wife for her future husband when she was sober) that it was difficult to get through such thick rhetoric without laughing. Maybe the best way to get through it is by reading it as a comedy.
Besides that, this book is supposed to be about drug use, but the way drugs are discussed is so removed from the reality of an addict's life. The following spoiler may or may not be a spoiler since it happens so early in the book.
After she graduates to harder drugs, she only writes about doing meth and heroin once and then never mentions any urges/cravings again? The entire book has no mentions (or a few if you read some parts generously) of the addicitve powers of dangerous drugs at all, and instead focuses only on LSD and marijuana. Actually, the book inaccurately depicts LSD as an addictive drug, which is crazy since if you're going to write propaganda for kids, why would you misinform them? I know pot is addictive, but LSD is not and it's been known to not be addictive for decades. As The Paris Review writes, "As antidrug propaganda, it’s so misinformed as to defeat its own purpose ('Anyone who says pot and acid are not addicting is a damn, stupid, raving idiot, unenlightened fool!')."
Lastly, I picked up on strong Christian overtones in this book (like when the narrator went to a church and was saved and ended many chapters with prayer, even saying once that praying gave her "the sweetest feeling" of her life), which I found I was right to notice since the author of this fake diary and others Beatrice Sparks was a Mormon counselor and had another "diary" accounting a young man's dangerous foray into Satanism—which, as we all should know by now, was never a real movement at all.Actual spoiler (unless you read the back of the book)
If there is even a sliver of truth or a single case this was based off of, I am sorry to that individual and their family for having what was sure to be an emotionally devasting time in their lives told with such carelessness.