Book Review: Go Ask Alice

                                                                        Go Ask Alice

By TiaKay Erickson

Go ask Alice is a diary of a young girl whose parents had published into a book soon after her death. This diary does not give specific names of the people, or specific places for privacy. It is her actual diary that she kept with her through her fifteenth birthday till she was about seventeen. She got hooked on drugs and they gave her the ride of her life.

            She was a young girl who had few friends but she was really close with her family. She didn’t tell people much, but she told her diary everything.

            The diary starts out with Alice being angry and sad. Her father was always gone to work because he was relocated and would stay at a hotel near his job, and only come home when he would get a break or when he missed his family too much. Her mother was very controlling, yet loving which drove Alice nuts. She would always correct Alice and tell her what she did wrong. The worst was when her mother would tell her how bad of an example she is for her little sister Alexandria and her little brother Tim. She wanted to be the perfect older daughter for her parents but when all they did was bug her, all she would want to do is rebel.

            Most of the time she would go to school then come home and lock herself in her room to escape the madness. She only got good grades in the classes she liked at school. The other classes she would just flunk everything and didn’t always show up for class. She would hang out at parties, but never did any drugs. She didn’t want to do drugs either. What started the addiction was at a party when someone slipped some lace into her drink. She didn’t know what happened to her until days after. She described how it felt amazing, all the colors, and how she felt like she was flying. She didn’t know that it was the start of an addiction. Her life became a downward spiral. After that party she was completely addicted and would do anything for any kind of drug. It even got to the point of stealing her grandfather’s painkillers. Once she ran out of his pills, she lied to the doctor about not being able to sleep. She got put on some pills that didn’t fully satisfy her, but she still took them. Her parents knew and tried to stop her but she wouldn’t listen.

            Chris was a girl that was a few years older than Alice. She owned a boutique and offered Alice a job. Chris also did drugs, but only when she wasn’t working.  The two girls would use their money to buy more drugs. They got to be good friends and Alice would go stay at Chris’ place so she wouldn’t have to deal with all the nagging of her parents. Alice got so into her job that she dropped out of school just so she could work for drug money.

            The two of them got sick of the small town that they lived in. They wanted bigger things in life. They decided to move to Florida. They saved money for a while and once they had enough money, they were gone. Alice never told her parents she was leaving she just let them worry. They didn’t have enough money for a house, so they got a small apartment. The apartment was a junk hole. It was all one room with holes in the wall, beat up floors, and no running water. They got into prostitution to pay the rent and to save money for a better apartment. They saved enough money to buy a house. They still needed money so they made the living room into a hang out spot for kids who needed a place to do drugs and not get caught by their parents. They needed to stay prostitutes so they could pay off their house, buy food, pay bills, and have money for more drugs.

            Alice and Chris got into a big fight so she road tripped back home. She would do anything for food and a ride. She stole a lot on her way back too. When she got back she knew she had to stop the drugs. That’s exactly what she did She got back into school, got good grades and got her self back together. But the death of her grandfather made her slip. She started taking drugs and doing bad things again. She ran away when she was high and something happened to her that made her loose consciousness. She woke up in a hospital bed; feeling like something was eating her. She was full of blisters, bruises, a broken leg and arm, and blood oozing out from everywhere that wouldn’t stop. She wrote in her diary about how much pain she was in all the time. She didn’t know what happened to her. She slowly felt herself disappearing and getting closer to death. She was only seventeen when the last entry in her diary was written.

            It’s hard to critique a book that wasn’t written to be a book. It got confusing at times and didn’t make much sense. It’s hard picturing a young girl doing stuff like that, but it’s true. Sometimes in the diary Alice wouldn’t write everything because she knew about it and didn’t want to write it in there, which made it confusing at points. It’s hard to critique a book that wasn’t written to be a book. I liked how when she would use slang or big words, the publishers would have a definition at the bottom of the page for each word. After Alice’s last entry the publishers had a page put into the book and explained what happened after that entry.