By: Angela L
A high school girl in the seventies has no tolerance for her mother and her family's move. Alice is a very self conscious girl with some obsessive compulsive signs. In the beginning she is starving herself for her own beauty ideals. She is very tentative to her feelings on female and male relationships, even showing signs of bisexuality Alice's character writes constantly in the diary from which the book Go Ask Alice Anonymous is based on. We see Alice go through the typical stresses of moving to a new home and school while the book also lets Alice hop on the roller coaster ride that is the main conflict, drugs. The author Beatrice Sparks takes you through Alice's terrible teenage choices.
After flying back across the country to visit her her grandparents for the summer she is invited to a party by piers from her previous school. The party seems to be PG for the first few hours then they play a game where everyone drinks soda to see who will win a "prize". The prize turns out to be an LSD trip. Alice enjoyed the trip but weeks after she has strongly mixed feelings , swaying from craving the next drug to try and fear of becoming a "dumb doper".
She goes around the country between running away, walking trough a trip and being put into an insane asylum. She let all her old friends fade away into the smoke of joints. She attained new drug using and dealing friends wherever she was.She went on highs and lows while her journey took different turns. As the book's plot rolled to a stop as she grapples with becoming sober for once last time, for good the druggie community becomes upset that she has been disturbing their way of life. When Alice is babysitting an infant the pot heads lace peanut candies with acid and the trip nearly ruins Alice. She self harmed during the trip and was so freaked out that at this point she was forced to an insane isum. The "grass gang" also testified that she had been dealing drugs even though before that she was completely sober.
The book itself presents the feeling of a diary as you move deeper into the mind of Alice. In the epilogue it was revealed that this was once the diary of a young girl. From her diary book to ,diary napkins and paper bags the subject of this story continued to write. Such resilience in a writer is appreciated. Since Alice wrote in her diary as if writing to a beloved long distant soul mate the reader really has the chance to feel as if Alice is addressing them as her diary, her friend and confidant.Alice is a well written character and as her world moves around her wit see her world being picked apart in her head, which I found to be interesting. Also contributing to the character was how naive and what little though is evidently put into her decisions. This made me upset with character as if she was my own ditsy friend. This is a eye opening and realistically written book. I would recommend it be put on any middle school or high school reading list to educate young people about the effects of drugs.
Go Ask Alice, by Beatrice Sparks, Creative Writing, March 2016, 160 pages
No comments:
Post a Comment