Wintergirls

Let me tell you right off the bat that this review will have spoilers.  I plan on quoting the heck out of this book.

Laurie Halse Anderson is amazing.  I really wish I could be her friend because she writes books that make me think and cry and hurt and feel.  She did it in Speak and again here in Wintergirls.

Lia is anorexic.  She is so far beyond unhealthy that she is at one point described as ‘a ghost with a heartbeat’.  After two stints in a rehab facility that she dubs ‘prison’ she is living with her father, step-mother and half-sister because she just cannot cope living with her cold, heart surgeon, no nonsense mother.

Lia takes us through memories of meeting her best friend Cassie for the first time, their first fight and the first time she saw Cassie force herself to throw up.  Cassie tells her she just wants to be thin, she just wants to be perfect and so together their journey begins, but after a fallout in which they don’t speak for three months Cassie dies alone in a motel room.

Before she dies Cassie calls Lia 30+ times, but Lia never answers.  When she discovers Cassie is dead her guilt is crippling and shameful.  She begins to see Cassie’s ghost everywhere.  Desperate to get to her ideal perfect weight she steps closer and closer to death’s door.

Anderson’s writing is brilliant.  Simply stunning at times.  Lia is not a sympathetic character.  She has turned against the people who love her, with the exception of her sister, lashing out at them for trying to help her get healthy.  But her anger and her desperation is real.  It is so honest and raw and full of hurt.

She writes the story as if it is Lia’s journal.  At times she will have crossed something out as if she is at war in her head over the things she knows are good and the way she feels she must think.  I found that to be such a perfect way of representing the conflict in Lia.

I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes from the book.  Just a taste, because really, you need to read this book yourself!

“They tied me back together, but they didn’t use double knots.  My insides are draining out of the fault lines in my skin, I can feel it, but every time I check the bandages, they’re dry.”

“There’s no point in asking why, even though everybody will.  I know why.  The harder question is ‘why not?’.  I can’t believe she ran out of answers before I did.”