Introduction

The title is Go ask Alice, which is written by Anonymous. The author is unknown, although Beatrice Sparks said she was the book’s editor after publication. Alice was born in America on September the 20th 1953, 15 years before she began to write her diary. She died on October the 12th 1970, when she was seventeen and two years after the beginning of her diary. There are no further known biographical details of the author. The first book was published in 1971. This book has 161 pages en the genre is a psychological novel.
The book is about a girl, Alice, she is the main character. She write a diary of her feelings and emotions. It could be an autobiographic story because it is a part of Alice’s life.
She compared herself with Alice from Alice in wonderland because she saw strange things too.

Body
In her diary, Alice write a lot of things she goes through and how she experience that. I have chosen the book Go ask Alice, because my mom has read it when she was at high school, and she told me it was a really good and realistic book and I would like it. And I did!

The title Go ask Alice is a relevant title. Alice said several times in her diary she wants to be a social worker and help children who have a drugs problem. She thinks she can help them better than other people, because she was a drugs addict too. So they can ask Alice, she will understand them better.

Author's purpose
She tells the story that way so you can see what she thinks and how she experiences the things that happens most of the time. The author's purpose is to warn the reader. She wants to warn the dangers of using drugs and what drugs can do with people.

Themes
There are a lot of themes in this book. Of course, one of the themes is drugs. She became a drug addict which has a lot of consequences for her and her family. Another theme is sex. She liked a boy, Roger, and she hoped to have her first time sex with him. But when she was influenced with drugs, she had sex with an other boy then she wanted to. Another theme is addiction. She is addicted by drugs and after all, she want to warn other people for drugs.

Setting
The book is structured chronologically, but she doesn’t write every day in her diary. Sometimes she does, but sometimes she doesn’t write for a week. Between the first and the last page, is about two years.
The story is structured in days, because it’s a diary. However, the book has two parts, because the story has fragments from two diaries. The story is set in America, for example in this places: Salt Lake City, Denver and San Francisco.

The told time and the telling time are similar, Alice doesn’t know how the story ends, because it’s a diary. So the person who read it doesn’t know how it ends too.

Main characters
The main character is Alice of course, because she is the writer of the diary. She is a very insecure girl. She never has a lot of friends. She goes on a diet because she thinks she is fat. She doesn't want to use drugs, but it’s a way to feel better and she became a drug addicted girl. She has a lot of problems in her young life.

Other persons;

• Her mum and dad; her mother was, according to Alice, always annoying her about everything. This is one of the reasons why Alice is insecure about herself. Her father is a university professor who loved her very much. He worked very hard to get Alice out of the mental hospital.
• Alexandria; she was Alice's little sister who was very sweet. Alice often wants to be like her, because she didn’t have problems like Alice had.
• Tim; he was Alice's little brother. First she thought he was very annoying, but later she found out that she can speak with him very well about everything. He was a very helpful brother.
  Everybody in the family was very nice to her each time Alice came home after she ran away. They supported her very much.
• Her grandparents (Gran and Gramps); Alice loved her grandparents very much and I think Alice was the one who missed them the most when they both died.
• Roger; he was the boy Alice loved at the begin of the story.
• Jill Peters; she was a schoolmate from Alice’s old school. Jill gave a party and here she got in contact with drugs for the first time.
• Beth; she was her first real friend at her new school. They were best friends until Alice started to use drugs.
• Chris; she was the girl who went to San Francisco with Alice. They are trying to stop using drugs and that’s the reason they went to San Francisco.
• Joel Reems: he was a student on the university where her father works. Alice is in love with him and he supported her from the beginning.

Climax
I think the climax in this story is when Alice left the insane asylum and wanted to help other people who are a drug addict. She wanted to help promoting that drugs are very bad.

Summary
Alice was a 15 year old girl. She was a young girl and had a few friends. She started to write a diary on September the 16th. In her diary she was writing about school and a boy, named Roger. She liked him very much, but he didn’t pay any attention to her. She was a very insecure girl, she thought she was fat a went on a diet. When her father got a new job, she was excited about the idea that they are going to a new town. Once in the new town, it took Alice a long time to make new friends. But she met a girl, Beth Baum. She was a Jewish girl. They spent much time together, but Beth had to go to a summer camp and Alice went to her grandparents in her old town. She met Jill Peter, a girl from her old school. Jill invited her to a party with some friends. Alice went to the party and she got a coke with LSD in it. She liked it very much, even while she didn’t know what was going on. She liked it that much, because she forgot the real world and how she really was. On the party she met Bill and he gave her a lot of drugs. At one time, she had a trip, she had sex for the first time with Bill.
Alice went to a shop where she met Chris. Chris offered he a job in the shop where she worked. Furthermore, she gave Alice drugs.
Alice met Richie a party and fell in love with him. She began to deal drugs for him. Chris had a boyfriend too, his name was Ted. When Chris and Alice found out that their boyfriends only used them to deal drugs, they ran away to San Francisco. Once in San Francisco, Alice and Chris promised to each other that they won’t use drugs anymore, but when they are at a party, they used LSD again…
Chris and Alice were sexually abused at another party because they had used heroin. It was the first time for both of the girls, and it didn’t feel well. So they promised each other not to use drugs anymore again and started their own jewelry shop.
After a long time, at Christmas time, Alice and Chris missed their families so they turned back to their home. Alice’s family was very sweet for her when she got home and gave her a lot of love. When Alice and Chris are finally stopped using drugs, the drugs dealers of Alice’s school came back and pushed them to use drugs again. Chris and Alice started to use drugs again. At one day, the police found drugs at Chris’s house. Chris and Alice tried to convince their parents they didn’t use drugs, but they didn’t believe them. Alice’s parents sent her to a psychiatrist, but Alice didn’t want to go so she ran away again.
She went to Denver and later to Coos Bay in Oregon. She slept outside. At one time, she got a cold and had to go to the doctor. Here she met Doris, a 14 years old girl who used drugs just like her. They went away and went through South California. They used drugs together and Alice got so high every day that she didn’t know what date it was, where she was… She didn’t know anything anymore.
She went a lot of times to a church where she talked with a priest. He told her that she had to call her parents. She did and they came to take her home.

Since this moment started her new life, her new diary and the second part of the book. She began to write a new diary and she seemed very happy and self-confident. But she also had hallucinations. She saw worms and maggots everywhere. She got this hallucinations after her grandparents died.
Alice went back to school, but a few kids who were using drugs were irritating her because she had stopped using drugs. Alice felt very lonely and she had no friends again, just like before. She also had nightmares about worms and maggots which were eating her.
When Alice was studying in the library she met Joel Reems. They became very good friends. After a long time, she didn’t had the feeling that she was all alone anymore.
At one time, Alice had used drugs again. She called Joel with the hope that he would help her. She told him what she had done, and he understand her.
Alice waked up in a hospital, she didn’t know what she was doing there. Then she remembered yesterday evening. She was babysitting and a girl, Jan, from school came by. Later that night, when Jan was gone, Alice ate some cookies. Someone had done drugs in it. Alice tripped again and it was a really bad trip. She saw a lot of worms and maggots which were eating her. She was yelling very loud and the neighbors had called the police. They found Alice locked in a closet, she had ripped off some hair and had injuries in her had. She remembered it all from last night…
When she had recovered for a long time, she went to a mental hospital. She didn’t like anything there and wanted to go out as soon as possible. In the hospital, there are a lot of kids who used drugs. Two of them were Babbie and Tom.
After a while, Alice was allowed to go home and her parents came to pick her up. She went on a short holiday with her family, because it was summer vacation. When they came back from vacation, Alice got some new friends. She did very well. When it was her birthday Joel visited her.

One day after her birthday, she stopped writing in her diary. She thought that grown-up girls didn’t write in a diary. Everything seemed great, everybody seemed happy, Alice seemed happy and wanted a new start of her life.
But it seemed like that, Alice died three weeks after she stopped writing in her diary. Still nobody knows what happened and nobody knows why it happened…

The epilogue states that she was found dead in her home by her parents. Probably by an overdose.

Analysis and Evaluation
I think the author did achieve her purpose very well. After reading this book, I’m even more convinced to never use drugs than I already did. It shows perfectly the bad consequences drugs can have and the troubles Alice has. I think a lot of people should read it so everybody is warned for consequences of drugs. I would definitely recommend the book!

The book wasn’t difficult to read, because a 15 years old girl has written it so I understand her, because I’m just one year older than she is. The use of language is adapted to all ages, young and old, everyone should understand it. And because it's described so well, you can empathize in the book very well.