Wintergirls

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Recommended Age: 12 and up
Publisher: The Penguin Group
ISBN-10: 014241557X
ISBN-13: 978-0142415573
Year Published: 2009
No. Pages: 304
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Main Character Gender: Female
Read & Reviewed by: Kestrel



“Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
I am that girl.
I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.
I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

Lia and Cassie are best friends-pale sticklike girls who are competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. Cassie commits suicide. Driven to self-destruction, Lia is anorexic. She starves herself to be in control and cuts herself to let out the pain. Lia manages to hide her illness from her parents. Cassie’s ghost returns to convince Lia to commit the ultimate act of self-destruction. Can Lia hold onto love and hope in order to survive?
Laurie Halse Anderson is a bold writer with a fast pace cut to the bone style. She uses endless and effective repetition of Lia’s self-hating mantras along with crossed out words that convey her inner struggle throughout the book. Reading Wintergirls made me want to reach out to Lia and save her life.

Lia has internal conflict. She learns that Cassie tried to call her 33 times before she commited suicide. She blames herself for Cassie's suicide and Cassie's ghost acts as a symbol of her guilt. Lia is like any teenage girl because she is stubborn and her disease makes her more controlling. I could relate to her because I could understand her feelings about her parent's divorce and having a step-family. I couldn't relate to her viewing anorexia as being strong because I see it as a weakness. I learnt that you can't just “get over” anorexia, it is a disease. Laurie Halse Anderson weaved in information about anorexia and depression throughout the book, the crossed-out words made me think of Lia like a robot, training her mind to hate herself, this made me understand more of what a mental diseas, anorexia, really is.

This poignant book is dark and unsettling however hope does play a part in the novel. In the form of Lia's family. This helped me understand the power of family in a crisis like this. Also there are small sections of humor that lightened up the book.

I recommend Wintergirls to young adults who are interested in a first person account of how society affects us in terms of how we veiw our bodies and how this in turn contributes to anorexia. I rated Wintergirls a 10 out of 10 because of Anderson's cut to the bone writing style.