Review: Title: Wintergirls Author: Laurie Halse Anderson Publisher: Viking Juvenile Publication Date: March 19th, 2009 Literary Awards: -Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award (RT Award) Nominee for Best Young Adult Novel (2009) -An ALA/YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers (2010) -YALSA Teens’ Top Ten (2010) -Milwaukee County Teen Book Award (2010) -Michigan Library Association Thumbs Up! Award Nominee (2010) -Iowa High School Book Award Nominee (2011) -Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee (2014) -Goodreads Choice Nominee for Young Adult Fiction (2009) -Cybils Awards Nominee for Young Adult Fiction (2009) -Literaturpreis der Jury der jungen Leser for Cover (2011) Format: Hardcover Source: Library Genre: YA, Contemporary
Blurb: 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.
Thoughts: I picked this book up at the library on one of my countless recent trips. This book had been sort of on my radar, but in the foggy background that I’m sure you’re all familiar with. I recognized the cover and Anderson’s name and picked it up.
I went into this book having not read the blurb. Within the first few pages, Lia’s pain was scribbled about in heartbreaking description and haunted murmuring. This was a slow and heavy read. Lia is a damaged character broken and exhausted from the mental disorder that is anorexia nervosa.
More often than you would think, people don’t understand that anorexia is not just an eating disorder. As it clearly is shown in this book, people who have anorexia cannot just sit down and eat a sandwich. They think about calories every moment of everyday until it consumes their entire life, until the numbers get so low that their own bodies consume them.
I have not personally struggled with an eating disorder of any kind, but do know someone who did. This book is accurate to an amazing degree on the everyday emotions of an anorexia sufferer.
Lia’s journey throughout this book is harsh, raw, but rings true. I struggled to read it because of Anderson’s talent for painting the picture. Despite the fact that i have never had any firsthand experience with this type of disorder, I felt all of Lia’s troubles along with her. Not only her mental health struggles, but her family troubles, and her trouble with her friend Cassie’s death and the guilt that came along with that.
Contemporary is a genre that gets a rap for being strictly sappy, poorly written romance. While there are lots of cases of well written romance contemporaries out there as well, the darker side of contemporary is not as often recognized. Anderson’s novel Speak is revered to be a classic in dark contemporary.
I’m not even sure that I want to use dark in this discussion. So scratch that word out. Everything in contemporary that might fall under the category isn’t “dark”, it’s real. It portrays the real struggles and real issues that teenagers and adults deal with today. They might not be fluffy stories, but that doesn’t make them any less current.
Overall, Anderson’s novel really hit home with me. I think that it is a book that more teenagers need to read, it needs to be more widely spread. People need to really understand.
In spite of this goodness, Wintergirls was not without flaws. Overall Anderson’s character development was beautiful and spot on with real people. However, one character, Elijah, came across as unnecessary by the end of the story. If his character had been more prominent and filled out a bit more, his side plot would have made a lot more sense in relation to the main one.
In Other Words: Anderson wrote a very blunt, very beautiful book about a girl’s struggle with anorexia. I was impressed with the character development and the real life details that she included.
Dust Jacket Ramblings: Overall, I think that this cover is okay. The colors work for the themes in the book, but I don’t understand the significance behind the “one eye covered” in relation to this novel. Also, the font used for the title does not compliment the font used for Anderson’s name.
Leave a Reply