Sunday, May 3, 2009

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson


Lia and Cassie were best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies. But now Cassie is dead. Lia’s mother is busy saving other people’s lives. Her father is away on business. Her stepmother is clueless. And the voice inside Lia’s head keeps telling her to remain in control, stay strong, lose more, weigh less. If she keeps going this way—thin, thinner, thinnest—maybe she’ll disappear altogether.
Absolutely everything about this book is chilling-the setting, the characters, the cover, and Laurie Halse Anderson’s bitter descriptions of a young girl’s descent into the world of anorexia. Daniel Kraus from Amazon stated in his review, “Anderson illuminates a dark but utterly realistic world where every piece of food is just a caloric number, inner voices scream “NO!” with each swallow, and self-worth is too easily gauged: “I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.” Struck-through sentences, incessant repetition, and even blank pages make Lia’s inner turmoil tactile, and gruesome details of her decomposition will test sensitive readers.” His words couldn’t be more true. You could easily make the argument that Wintergirls is a horror story, filled with death, ghosts, and startling prose that will leave you curled up in a blanket feeling the chill radiating off the pages. This book isn’t necessarily one you enjoy, but one that changes the way you look at the people around you, and one that you give to everyone you know.

1 comment:

Monster of Books said...

It seems quite interesting, I'll have to read this some time.