Review: 'Unmask Alice ' by Rick Emerson

I remember hearing about Go Ask Alice when I was young in the '90s, but as I didn't grow up in the US, it wasn't really a part of the culture, if that makes sense. I never read it myself, nor did anyone I knew. As I got older, I heard more about it and about its messy origins and its messy consequences, but not until Emerson's Unmask Alice did I really find out how twisted the stories of Alice and Jay had become. Thanks to BenBella Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincerest apologies for the delay in reviewing.

Pub. Date: 705/07/2022
Publisher: BenBella Books

In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.
 
But Alice was only the beginning.
 
In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis—adolescent suicide—to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities.
 
In reality, Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards.
 
Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed "the fraud capital of America." It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire.
 
Unmask Alice . . . where truth is stranger than nonfiction.

Throughout Unmask Alice, Emerson tracks a variety of stories, stories both real and fictional. At the heart of the book is the desire to find out what was going on with the cultural juggernaut that was Go Ask Alice and its follow-ups, amongst which was Jay's Journal, which lent kindling to the Satanic Panic. Written by "Anonymous", these books were sold as the real-life journals and stories of teens in the '70s, lost in drugs, satanism, and hedonism. In fact, they were created by a woman called Beatrice Sparks who desperately wanted to be an author. She used the stories of actual teens and then threw everything but the kitchen sink into the mix as well. In the process, she did not just enflame some of the worst instincts of US culture, but also twisted the lives of real people into unrecognisable horrors. Unmask Alice is not the easiest of reads, because of the complexities of the various stories Emerson brings together and the real sadness surrounding some of them. I was hooked by it throughout however, both wanting to know how Sparks did what she did, but also appreciating everything I was learning about the US in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.

Something I really appreciated about Rick Emerson's writing was how aware he was of the power of writing. That makes sense, of course, as he tracked how Beatrice Sparks abused the stories of others for her own gains, treading over their lives as if they didn't matter. More importantly, however, Emerson was aware that he himself could fall into the same trap, himself using the stories of the real teens behind Sparks' books to tell another story. And so, from the outset of Unmask Alice, he is very clear about where his information comes from, what is fact, what is conjecture, etc. There is only one section, which he demarks clearly, where he is hiding names and details and this is done for the sake of the people behind the story. It was Emerson's awareness, I guess, of how powerful stories are, how they can ruin a life, how they can twist a life beyond recognition, which stayed with me a lot after finishing Unmask Alice; that truly is the message of the book. I also appreciated that while he did not mince his words, he did not go the easy route of utterly demonising Sparks. He lets her actions speak for themselves, but also informs us of her background. 

I give this book...

4 Universes! 

Unmask Alice is, I believe, a very important corrective to the culture. If you read Go Ask Alice, if you remember the panic around D&D, if you wonder how that all began, I cannot recommend Unmask Alice more!