Comments on: Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (But Not Really Anonymous)

By: Ann Kingman

Ann Kingman — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:26:15 +0000

I read this when I was 12 or 13, back in the late 70s. Whether it was a true diary or not didn’t matter to me. What did matter was that it *felt* real — more real than many of the other books that were considered “age appropriate.”

It’s important to know that at the time, there was very little in the way of “young adult” fiction. Authors who pushed the boundaries, like S.E. Hinton, Paul Zindel and Robert Cormier, were rare, and that’s partly why books like Go Ask Alice were so important to that generation. Go Ask Alice was the only book about drug abuse that I knew about at that time. I’m thankful that my 7th grade teacher had it in her school library.

By: Joan

Joan — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:00:10 +0000

I’m a girl in my early teens. I wanted to read this book for my English class, but it was placed on the “permission slip required” shelf. So, today I got the permission slip from my teacher and brought it home for my mom to sign. She looked it up on the Internet, learned about how it was fake and all the profanity and sexual references in it, and said “no way!” But now I want to read it even more, just because I want to be able to see for myself how bad it really is and how fake it really seems. Is it really that bad for an early teenage girl?

By: Lola

Lola — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:16:37 +0000

I really hate that people try to use the vocabulary and “too poetic” thing to argue that this book couldn’t possibly be written by a 15 year old. I don’t know if I should believe this book was entirely fiction or if it was real, but either way, teenagers can write like this. The main character keeps a diary and somewhere in the book, she does actually say that she likes to read, so from both these things, people should get that she likes to write and is a good writer. It really doesn’t matter how old she was. All teenagers are different and see the world from different perspectives. You can’t lump them all into one category titled “teens are too dumb or lazy to use sophisticated vocabulary.” I’ve read this book 2 or 3 times and I really love it. I really don’t want to believe that it’s a fraud because that is just such a major let-down. But I can’t deny that parts of it does sound very iffy. I agree with a lot of the comments on here and some of the article, like the fact that she never actually goes into detail about losing her virginity or her first kiss, two very big deals in a girl’s life. I guess some of it is fake, but the book was written like Ellen Hopkins books: loosely based on real life stories. The “editor” is definitely the author.

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:28:09 +0000

The inside cover of my book says…

“This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical places, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.”

By: Readingyay

Readingyay — Wed, 11 May 2011 11:55:45 +0000

Where in the book is the quote “…I was a shooting star, a comet piercing the firmament, blazing through the sky…” ?

By: Tabbycakes

Tabbycakes — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 23:47:18 +0000

I’m just really upset that it isn’t a real diary.
I do dramatic interpretation for my school’s speech and debate team, part of my piece is a selection from this diary.
‘diary,’ ugh, so disappointing.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 03:17:55 +0000

I am only 13 years old I read it , I loved it. It says it’s BASED on a diary , so obviously is going to be changed to make the book more interesting. When you really think about it we may never know exactly every detail about it

By: Cristina

Cristina — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 01:43:48 +0000

I love the book and refuse to believe its completely fiction, it’s real, the editor/author probably had to make only a few adjustments, and it is possible that Alice was able to write like that, remember the part where she said how much she loved her books? Her vocabulary might have been that good, and she was better in English at school than Math, so maybe she was familiar with that style of writing. My brother was on drugs for a while when he was a teenager, and he would write a lot of very deep and profound things, so it’s true that the drugs may have contributed to her creative writing.

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:14:20 +0000

Some young teens actually do talk like that, including me, for instance. Not of that calibre all of the time, but yeah, I do talk like that from time to time, especially when I write, so you can’t use the grammar/vocabulary thing to jumpstart an investigation, exactly.
She didn’t really have friends to write about.
I know a lot about drugs, and I figured that the vagueness was because it was all written in a high.
I’m kinda heartbroken to find out that it’s fake. I really connected to this story.

By: KjM

KjM — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:41:38 +0000

well im 13 and very mature for my age. i woould def let my teenager read this its important that they know things like that. but i truly believe that this story is true, the author just added some interesting metaphors and similes to make it better!