Unmask Alice

As a teenager, I remember reading with equal parts fear and excitement the “anonymous diary of a teenage girl” who descends into a world of drugs, sex, and crime. It never occurred to me that the story wasn't real. But Go Ask Alice, and numerous follow up “diaries” were almost completely fictional creations of Beatrice Sparks, a Mormon wife and mother who yearned to be taken seriously as a writer.

Unmask Alice starts out strong, with brief glimpses of Sparks' life and the 1971 political/cultural environment that made it possible for Alice to become a worldwide sensation. But then it detours into a long, tragic saga of a teenaged boy whose suicide became the basis for Sparks' next bestseller. I guess Emerson wanted to show that the truth was heartbreaking enough before Sparks added Satanism, blood sacrifice, and explicit sex to the diary given to her by the grieving mother. But a few examples of the real diary would have been just as effective. Soon the narrative becomes repetitive, as Sparks creates numerous fictional diaries, passing them off as true stories of the troubled youth she counseled (her clinical experience and training were also fraudulent). She never got the literary acclaim she wanted, but she never suffered any consequences for her lies and manipulation either.

It's common knowledge that Go Ask Alice is a complete fabrication (see 2003 entry in Snopes.com), but Emerson never describes how and when Sparks' masterpiece was gradually discredited, acting as if he is the first person to connect the dots. He does not provide any citations or references, claiming in his author's note that the reader can look stuff up online to verify his facts. In the few instances of “things that aren't public and for reasons of privacy aren't currently checkable,” hopefully they will “ring true” to the reader. Emerson claims to have conducted copious interviews for the book but does not list any of the subjects, or attribute any of their quotes. As far as he's concerned, he may have printed some factual errors, but since it was not done intentionally, it's okay.

It's sadly ironic that Emerson's book about a woman who took the adage “never let the facts get in the way of a good story” to the nth degree, fails miserably at demonstrating that he is any better than Sparks.