Wintergirls in Gaston Library

Nov 21, 2016 Traci rated it really liked it

Laurie Halse Anderson seems to excel at writing about teen girls' issues. I say "seems" because this is only the 2nd book I've read by the author, the other one being Speak. Speak deals with the issue of rape; Wintergirls is all about eating disorders.

The book is about the once healthy, then dysfunctional relationship between Lia and her best friend, Cassie. They meet when Cassie moves in across the street, become the best of friends, and life is good - until they hit puberty. At that point, the Laurie Halse Anderson seems to excel at writing about teen girls' issues. I say "seems" because this is only the 2nd book I've read by the author, the other one being Speak. Speak deals with the issue of rape; Wintergirls is all about eating disorders.

The book is about the once healthy, then dysfunctional relationship between Lia and her best friend, Cassie. They meet when Cassie moves in across the street, become the best of friends, and life is good - until they hit puberty. At that point, they both fall victim to believing they are "fat" and they bond over trying to be the skinniest one. Except that it's not about being skinny - it's about control. The litany of things that go through Lia's head each time she puts something in her mouth, how much she wants it/shouldn't eat it/can't eat it, the number of calories in each item, how long she'll need to exercise to burn off said calories, is shocking, but clearly indicates that Lia wants control over something in her life. Her parents are divorced; her father remarried a woman who already had a daughter, and her mother is never around due to her career as a heart surgeon. Starving herself is the only thing Lia has control over, but maybe not for long. She's already been "to jail" (an in-patient facility for people with eating disorders), and she's being monitored by Jennifer, her step-mother. She's weighed once a week, and of course, everyone watches every bite she puts in her mouth.

It's a very disturbing book, all the more so because at the very beginning, you learn that Cassie has died. This isn't me spoiling the book, trust me. The novel is written in Lia's first-person POV, which really works to get inside her head. The characters aren't one-dimensional; Jennifer isn't the evil stepmother that she could have been written as, nor are the parents completely blind to Lia's problems. They want to believe that their little girl isn't backsliding, even when she is.

As much as I've been a control freak at times, this is one thing that thankfully never happened to me. Don't get me wrong - I'm one of the millions of women that isn't totally in love with my body, and I definitely didn't love it as a teenager. However, I never even once thought about trying to limit my calories to 400-500/day, and I certainly didn't want to purge after eating. I'm one of those strange people who will do just about anything to avoid throwing up - it scares me for some reason. Always fear I'll be vomiting violently enough that I'll start seeing internal organs.

After reading this book, I am eternally thankful for my healthy relationship with food, even though I probably do eat too many of the "bad" ones. And I wish I could take away the pain that any girl - or woman - feels that causes her to head down such a road. ...more

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