Go Ask Alice by "Anonymous"

First published 1971.

You can't ask Alice anything anymore.

But you can do something - read her diary. Strong, painfully honest, nakedly candid. The actual story of a desperate girl on drugs and on the run who almost made it. (book back blurb)

What we have here is a sorry excuse for a teen voice. Even if I didn't know who the real author was behind this book, I think it's pretty obvious that the hand is forced and exceptionally preachy.

I understand that there's a forty year gap in the lingo but even with that, the voice is contrived and inauthentic. It reads like an adult trying to sound like a teen but still sounding like an adult with a message. It was annoying and made it very difficult to read. The insistence of the girl getting off drugs alone was just absurd to read. It made the girl's words and actions mismatch and the she was overall hard to follow because of that.

Not to mention she was one whiny little bitch. God, she wasn't even likable as a character. I didn't feel a damn thing for her when she spiraled or got locked up. She was a hard character to care for. She didn't solve any problems on her own; she created major problems and when things got too rough, she constantly ran home for help. I guess that could be played into the adult author trying to write a teen without any real understanding of them. She was too much a child that wanted to be bailed out and she was way too dumb when it was convenient to the plot.

The epilogue was awesome. She's dead. We don't know how she died. You just need to know she's dead from drugs. Drugs. Bad drugs. Never mind just before the epilogue she was entirely turned around and totally clean except for one of her enemies slipping her something. But she just dropped dead anyway. Because drugs are bad. Don't do them.

Give me a break. What a preachy, unrealistic book. Yeah, I can see why parents might get up in arms about the drug and sex references but my biggest concern is how anyone could have thought this was real. I guess if you're a parent and have an idea of how a teenager sounds (as opposed to how they really sound), you'd buy into it but otherwise? I'd sooner believe the earth rotated backwards.

It was good to read since it's such a commented-on book but at the end of the day, it's really ridiculous. I couldn't take the message seriously because the execution was just laughable. Go read some Ellen Hopkins if you're looking for a gritty teen drug tale. Hers will rip your heart out twelve times over. This one's just good for a laugh.