Book: Wintergirls
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Pages: 278
How Long It Took Me To Read: 1 day
Read on: My iPad
Plot Summary: “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, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what comes after size zero and size double-zero? When Cassie succumbs to the demons within, Lia feels she is being haunted by her friend’s restless spirit.
In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the multiple-award-winning Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia’s descent into the powerful vortex of anorexia, and her painful path toward recovery.
General Thoughts: I have wanted to read a book by Halse Anderson for a while now, since I've heard amazing things about her writing style and her stories. I wanted to read Speak but I haven't managed to get my hands on it and it deals with rape so that kinda puts me off reading it. But I'll read it soon.
This book and it's premise is of interest to me, I studied Eating Disorders (ED) in a academic set-up while doing my Masters in Clinical Psychology, I did a paper on the topic and spend months reading up on ED and was surprised to find it was almost a sub-culture of it's own. Girls battling with EDs were a support system to each other. Things like Pro-Ana websites were very popular and girls all over the world shared tips to fool parents, doctors and other when weighing them. It was fascinating and disturbing all at once. But I hadn't read about EDs in a fictional world and this book was a great way to re-visit a topic I was interested in.
Things I Liked:
1. The book does a fantastic job of getting inside the head of girl battling Anorexia Nervosa. Her thoughts, her battles, her view towards food were all on point. Every thought is geared towards losing weight, getting skinny and fighting the urge to eat. The constant counting of calories, the hunger was all powerful and poignant.
2. I loved how her fight with food was shown so well in the book. Her relationship with food was a complicated and messy affair. She wants it, she is constantly hungry and craving food but she reminds herself of her supposed fat thighs and abstains from eating. The calories counting and the cheating she does and how she fools her family into thinking she has eaten was all so good and shown well.
3. The book doesn't shy away from gore-ish detail and packs a punch, with the horrific details of what can happen when you abuse your body.
4. I loved Lia and her step-sister's relationship, it was the only relationship where Lia was remotely honest and didn't lie or grudge her.
5. I liked that the book went back and forward, it went as far as Lia's childhood and her friendship with Cassie and her descent into ED.
Things I Didn't Like:
1. The writing though powerful and strong wasn't as great as I thought. There were words written and crossed out, this was done over and over and it got a bit old.
2. The hallucinations and the visions bit was a bit much.
3. I would have liked more Lia and Cassie in the book. Especially more Cassie.
4. Overall, I found this book a little pointless. It sounds a little cruel but this was just a story of a girl suffering from ED and then eventually deciding to get better.
Rating: 2.5/5
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