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8th Apr '13 3:26:54 PM Xtifr

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''GoAskAlice'' is a novel by youth counsellor Beatrice Sparks, first published in 1971. It is the story of a troubled young woman who seeks solace in drugs and the counter-culture. She comes to grief as a result. It is famous for its DrugsAreBad message, being banned for references to sex, rape and drugs, and almost certainly being a fake. Rather than being a RealLife diary of a young drug addict, it is the work of Beatrice Sparks, [[BasedOnAGreatBigLie who attempted to pass it off as true for a number of years.]] It is classic SchoolStudyMedia.

The novel is a dark ComingOfAgeStory. The work takes the form of a "diary", the keeper of which is [[NoNameGiven not named]]. Usually she is called Alice, from the title, but her name is actually Carla, and Alice is an addict who she briefly meets on the street. Carla is a sensitive fifteen year old girl, alienated from her conservative parents and initially without friends. When she does start making friends and discovers the TheSixties counter-culture she also encounters drugs. Her first experience is benign: she is unwittingly given LSD at her friend Jill's birthday party and has a pleasant trip.

Carla loses her virginity while on LSD. She is guilty about this and her drug use. She and her female friend Chris take to dealing drugs for their respective boyfriends. Upon discovering said boyfriends having sex with each other, they leave for SanFrancisco, leaving their families as well.

In San Francisco they move into a small apartment and get jobs. Their vow to stay clean does not last, in fact they use harder drugs. While on heroin at a party, both girls are raped. A long series of unpleasant events follows. Carla gets on and off drugs over and over again. Chris gets in trouble with the police and Carla returns home, but upon being harrassed by other stoner kids since they think she's a "squealer", she's framed for drug possession and is sent to an asylum, where she sorta bonds with a younger and even more broken girl named Babbie.

The novel at first seems to end on a high, so to speak, with Carla reunited with her family, off drugs, with a boyfriend named Joel and showing greater maturity. [[spoiler: A epilogue slams that with a DownerEnding.]]

The portrayal of sixties hippie culture is limited. Tellingly, political protest and music are scarcely mentioned. It works best as a critique of the hedonistic excesses of the movement. As a "warning work" it has similarities to ''RequiemForADream''. It has a similar theme of disenchanted youth going off the rails as is found in ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye''.

!!!If you are looking for the trope that used to have this name, please see AliceAllusion.

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!! ''GoAskAlice'' provides examples of these tropes:

* AliceAllusion: In relay: the book is named from "White Rabbit", a song by the contemporary psychedelic band JeffersonAirplane who in turn saw drug imagery in ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''. Carla in the novel also wonders if Creator/LewisCarroll was on drugs when he wrote it.
* AnonymousAuthor: Or published as such, at any rate.
* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The narrator speaks glowingly of her experiences in Coos Bay, Oregon, and in the same breath describes how she visited the Psychedelic Shop and the Digger Free Store. Both these establishments were in San Francisco, neither was a franchise, and both had closed down by the time the narrator got there.
* BasedOnAGreatBigLie: Ostensibly the real diary of a teenage girl, it was, in fact, entirely fabricated by Sparks. She has also released a series of other "true diaries" in the same vein as ''GoAskAlice'', but dealing with different subjects, such as AIDS (''It Happened to Nancy''), teen pregnancy (''Annie's Baby'') and depression-linked Satanism, we kid you not (''Jay's Journal'').
* BreakTheCutie
* BrokenBird: Carla and also her friend Babbie, whom she meets while in the asylum.
* ComingOfAgeStory: Ticks the boxes.
* ContemplatingYourHands: This stoner cliché makes an appearance: in one scene hands become fascinating under the influence.
* DanBrowned: The book is not the result of researching a real account. It is fiction.
* DepravedBisexual: [[spoiler: Sheila the fashion designer. She and her boyfriend Rod are the ones who rape both Carla and Chris in San Francisco.]]
* DepravedHomosexual: [[spoiler: The drug dealers Richie and Ted]]
* DrugsAreBad: Basically ''[[DrugsAreBad Drugs Are Bad: The Book]]'' the same way ''RequiemForADream'' is ''[[DrugsAreBad Drugs Are Bad: The Movie]]''.
* DownerEnding: At first you think it is going to be a happy ending with the main character changing her life for the better. But then in the epilogue, you find out that [[spoiler:she died three weeks later of an overdose. It's not clear if it was an accidental one or if she was killed by other drug addicts.]]
* EmoTeen: Carla, Babbie, Chris.
* TheGenerationGap: As a theme. It helps divide Carla from her parents.
* GrowingUpSucks
* TheLawOfConservationOfDetail: The fact that the book follows this is cited by {{Snopes}} as evidence that it is fake. After all, one would expect a real teenage girl's diary to ramble on about silly gossip rather than focusing so much on her plot-relevant drug addiction. When this first came out, many reviewers simply assumed it had been edited to take out all the chit chat.
* MiseryLit: The book tried to pass itself off as this, but is now widely agreed to be a work of fiction.
* MyNameIsNotShazam: As noted above, Alice is not the protagonist's name. Officially she's "anonymous", though a quote from a drug dealer's child indicates her name is actually Carla.
** A MadeForTVMovie adaptation goes ahead and gives her name as Alice, presumably because ViewersAreMorons.
* ScareEmStraight: The work's probable objective, as an anti-drug tract.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: Carla's struggles and growth are rendered sadly pointless by the epilogue.
* TheSixties: The setting, as filtered through an anti-drugs activist.
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31st Mar '13 1:55:46 PM LongLiveHumour

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30th Dec '12 10:39:34 AM CaptEquinox

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28th Dec '12 9:05:08 PM CaptEquinox

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