Go ask Alice is based on the actual diary of a fifteen – year – old drug user.
The 15 year old girl who is the author of the book is anonymous. It can be difficult to place the book in a special category, but fictional autobiography is more or less adequate if the question is raised wether the book is fabricated or not. The book is about drug problems in general and allows us to peek into the world of adolescents many problems, but does not offer any solutions. At the end she loses grip of it all.
The setting is in USA about 30 years ago. The 70´s was the time of hippies, freedom and peace, but it was also a special drug – consuming age, and drugs were widely abused by many youths.
We get to meet many characters in the book, and Alice has the leading part in it. Besides Alice, we hear a lot about her family, her mom, her dad, her little brother and sister and also her grandparents. Even though Alice’s family seems to be very loving they didn’t manage at all to see through her facade, where she kept all her troubles and questions, and never shared them with anyone, besides her diary. She also writes a lot about Joel because they are in love with each other. Joel is an 18 year old boy who lost his father when he was seven years old.