Go ask Alice

Title: Go ask Alice
Author: Anonymous
Number of pages: 185

1) Summery

In the beginning Alice is an unpopular and innocent 15 year old girl. Alice moves to a different town and tries to start over  and make friends. Sadly it did not work out that way. Because she is a bit down the last time, her parents want her to go to her Grandparents. (they live in the town she lives before). One day a girl, called Jill, invites her to a party. At the party 10 of the 14 glasses are filled with LSD, also Alice is one of the ‘lucky ones’. She thinks it is great and really liked it. She likes it so much she spent the rest of the holiday’s using drugs at party’s. When she comes back home she meets Beth. Beth is in the same year as Alice and they become really close friends. But a summer later Beth has to go to a Jude camp. And when she return, she is with a boy she has met there all the time.
Then she meets an other girl called Chris. Chris one year older than she is but they are having a lot fun. The use drugs a lot. And they are spending a lot of time with their boyfriends Richie and Ted. And they are having sex. But they always have it when they’re stoned. One day when Alice and Chris just walk in at Richie’s apartment, Richie and Ted are having sex together! Alice is so upset that she and Chris are telling to the police Richie and Ted are drugs dealers. But after they did that they run away to San Francisco because they are afraid Richie and Ted will punish them. In San Francisco they rent a really dirty and smelly apartment where they stay for 3 months. Alice gets a job at a bra shop, but after two weeks she leaves her job, because it was such a dirty shop. Then she gets a job at a jewelry shop. She is having a good time there, but she is homesick all the time. Chris works at a clothing shop. Together they decide they will never ever use drugs again. But when Chris’s boss invite them to a party they smell drugs and the use is again. Alice is afraid all the time. And she is crying a lot. After a while she and Chris had enough money to open their own shop. They rent a room and it is also a new apartment.
A lot of children really likes the shop and they earn loads of money. One month after they opened the shop, they decide to go home again. When Alice called her parents, they’re really happy to hear from her and she feels finally important to, and not just ‘the sister of…’ when she arrives home she’s crying but happy too. But happiness is not long. After three weeks she flees to Denver, where she lives with a couple of other drug-addicts, but she doesn’t feel home there so after a month she returns home again.
She starts a new diary to start a new life. She is really happy, but after a week her grandfather dies in his sleep. She’s feeling sad. Her grandmother was really healthy but she can’t live without her husband so after three weeks Alice’s grandmother died too.
At school everybody is bullying her and calling her ‘Mary Pure’ because she’s not having drugs anymore. They also put drugs in her bag often, or they put drugs is her juice. She’s feeling depressed again and because of that her dad says she can use the university library where she meets Joel. She really likes him and after a while she tells the truth of her past and she’s afraid Joel will leave her. But he doesn’t. Joel thinks it was really brave of her to tell the truth. He didn’t left her.
One day she’s babysitting at Mrs. Larsen’s house but when she wakes up, she is in a hospital, her parent tell her that she had an overdose but when she tell them she didn’t take it herself, they believe her.
But she’s sent to a insane asylum. There she meets a 13 year old girl, who was a prostitute and she’s in there for a really long time.
After a moth she can go home, and for a while everything goes good! She meets some new friends and she’s having a good time. But them she decides to stop writing in her diary. She thinks she’s old enough to talk to somebody else then her diary.
But the epilogue said she died three weeks after her decision. She died at an overdose but you’ll never know if it was accidental or somebody else did it…

2) Most important characters

The most important character is Alice, the main character is Chris because she and Alice lived together.

3) Title explanation

Actually I really don’t know why the title is ‘Go ask Alice’ because it doesn’t make sense at all!

4) Theme

The theme of the book is
Sadness: Alice is depressed, her grandmother and grandfather are dying
Drugs: She’s using drugs all the time
Death: She dies in the end

5) Time and place of action

The time and place of action is in America. In San Francisco and some other places but they don’t mention where. The book is about the 60’s. That wasn’t in the book but I read it on the internet!

6) The most fascination part.

I really loved (and hated!) the end. You think everything is well again but then you discover she died… and you don’t even know if it was in purples!

7) My own opinion

I really loved the book, normally I read English books because I have to. This time I really read it because I wanted to! I really recommend this book because it’s really touching.
It is really a book you start in, where you don’t have any idea at all but when you have read few pages you just don’t want to stop anymore!
I have read the book in 3 days, normally It takes a week.
I have heard there is a film about and I definitely want to see it.