Go Ask Alice: A Real Diary

by Anonymous

[Kevin Costain]

I had heard of it - perhaps in a school setting - but didn’t read the book back then. Fast forward to 2020 and my teenage niece reveals she’s reading Alice. She tell me it’s worth checking out. Well twist my rubber arm - I’m in.

The subject matter isn’t exactly a rosy one. Teenagers and drugs. I wasn’t sure how I was going to react to it, but I started reading anyway.

“Goodbye dear home, goodbye good family. I really am leaving mostly because I love you so much and I don’t want you to ever know what a weak and disreputable person I have been. And I hate being a high school dropout, but I dare not even write for my transcripts, knowing you and Richie might follow them. I’m leaving you a note beloved family, but it can never tell you how sacred you are to me.”

The mountain of controversy around whether a teenager wrote this or not (apparently not) adds something to the backstory of his interesting book.

The challenge is, with the benefit of hindsight, can this book possibly be seen as a sincere attempt at a teenager’s inner narrative - or a propaganda piece for the newly minted late-seventies war on drugs. Hard to tell. At times it felt as if Alice was a fake person, and other times it felt like Alice was very real, clutching her diary as if it kept her sanity in check.

A recommend read if only for the fact that this is a book “of its time.”