Wintergirls

Title: Wintergirls

 

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Publisher: Penguin Group (2009)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Realistic Fiction

Length: 278 pages

Synopsis:  Lia is frozen, caught on a path she can't escape and can't control.  Her family seems to have fallen apart: her parents are divorced and preoccupied with their own lives and her stepmother is too busy shuttling her own daughter from violin lessons to soccer practice to see what is happening.  Lia finds a brittle strength in watching the numbers of her bathroom scale tick downward.  One hundred and ten pounds.  One hundred.  Ninety.  Her bones stretch out from pale skin, but the number is never low enough.  One night, her one-time best friend, Cassie, is found dead in a local motel after calling Lia more than thirty times.  Lia never picked up, but Cassie isn't willing to let it rest.  Now Lia sees her everywhere, stretching out icy wintergirl fingers so thin the light shines through.  Cassie stands at the end of the path Lia is walking.  How far will she go?

 

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: Having previously read Anderson's Speak, my initial reaction to another book about the plight of a teen girl in a desperate situation was "Really?  Again?"  Could she really tell another story in that vein with the same kind of impact?  Could she do it without being trite?  Then I opened the book and never questioned her again.  This book is a horrifying window into the world of disordered eating.  It's not about beauty.  It's about strength and control.  I've worked with kids with eating disorders.  I've seen some of the ways they try to trick the scales.  I've seen their matchstick arms and hollow ribs and straw-like hair.  I understand the need for control, the power that comes with self-denial, the triumph over pain.  Anderson captured it all.  Lia and Cassie were dancers, yes, but they weren't driven to be thin by their need for the spotlight.  Cassie was interested in theatre, but she didn't purge to get the lead in a play.  For these girls, it's not about getting attention.  It's not about being beautiful.  It's about being strong.  It's about having power in a world that has conspired to rob them of it.  The public health professional in me cringes when Lia logs onto a support blog for anorexics-- not a blog to support recovery, but about how to hide one's symptoms, how to cut calories and burn more.  These exist.  They're not hard to find and they're hard to remove, and every time someone logs on, it gets harder to change the mindset about disordered eating.  Life for Lia gets harder and harder and worse and worse.  As the book draws to a close, she hits rock bottom.  In a way, I'm glad to see this.  For people struggling with problems like these-- addiction, disordered eating, domestic violence-- it's not easy to make a change.  This book isn't about Lia's recovery.  It's about making the decision that she wants to.