Book Review
Anderson, Laurie Halse. (2009). Wintergirls. New York: Penguin Group Publishing. 9780142415573.
From the very first sentence, we are brought inside Lia’s world. From the very first page we are thrown into Lia’s thoughts. We are manipulated by Lia’s concerns. We are consumed by Lia’s struggles and emotions. The line between where this high school student ends and the reader begins suddenly becomes blurred once the reader opens the door to Wintergirls.
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson follows the story of an eighteen year old girl who is struggling with anorexia, cutting, and loss. It is told through the main character, Lia’s perspective as the reader is granted access to the thoughts that even the character herself cannot admit to.
The narration begins the day that Lia finds out that her best friend Cassie has died. We find out that Cassie died alone in a motel room. Was it suicide? Murder? Or something else? The cause of death is not revealed; however, what is revealed is that Cassie had called Lia several times before she died. The two girls had not spoken for months, as Cassie had decided that Lia was not good for her. Cassie did not want Lia’s struggles with anorexia and cutting to affect her life anymore, so she let Lia go. But why was she calling her? What did she want? And how can Lia live with the fact that she did not answer the phone?
Readers are granted an all access pass into every corner of Lia’s mind. We are able to watch as she covers up her weight loss every Tuesday at her stepmother’s weekly weigh-in. We are able to feel how detached she has felt from her mom Dr. Marrigan as she has always felt like just another one of her patients instead of a daughter. We are able to count each calorie, to feel each prick of a knife against her skin, and to fight against each thought or craving for food. As readers, we become more than an outsider looking in, we become the person that is going "
The character complexity of this book is amazing. Although the story is written through Lia’s point of view, we are allowed to see the unreliability and the flaws in Lia’s thinking. This is not only done though Lia’s crossing out of her initial reactions, which gives us insight into how her thoughts and actions are not always correlated. It is also done though the scenes with her mother, father, and her stepfamily. We are able to see what Lia cannot allow herself to see: her mother’s attempts at helping her, her father’s love, her stepmother’s feeling of helplessness and her concern for how Lia is affecting her stepsister Emma as well. This book’s ability to construct the readers in a way that makes them identify with Lia’s struggles, to not want to eat that cupcake and to lose that next pound, at the same time that they see the harm and the unhealthiness of these actions is amazing. The book is able to create that tension between desire and restraint, between will and want, between reality and construction. The book is able to position its readers as an outsider and insider simultaneously. Lia becomes more than just a patient or a girl in need. The readers become disoriented as Lia’s world and the real world become intertwined in their juxtaposition.
How will Lia move on? How will she get past the guilt of Cassie’s death? How will she find reality once again? Or will she be trapped forever, lost between life and death, as a winter girl?
“You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a winter girl, Lia-Lia, caught in between the worlds. You’re a ghost with a beating heart” (196).
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