Rewind & Review: Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
Published: March 19, 2009 by Viking Juvenille
Received: bought ebook via Barnes & Noble

“Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
I am that girl.
I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.
I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

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 step-mother 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 on going this way—thin, thinner, thinnest—maybe she'll disappear altogether.
In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the National Book Award finalist Speak, best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson explores one girl's chilling descent into the all-consuming vortex of anorexia. {goodreads.com}

This is my third novel by Laurie Halse Anderson that I have read and she's done it again, completely shocked and blown me away.  This woman's ability to write is like nothing else.  She has the ability to take a character's voice, make it their own, and really project it through the pages at you.  I found myself completely engulfed by the desperate, yet hauntingly sour thoughts of Lia - the dead girl walking.

Wintergirls battles the issue of anorexia.  It digs deep to the dirty side of this retched disease, giving the reader a glimpse of what it's like to be dying, starving yourself from the inside out.  Lia's best friend Cassie has just died.  The two girls grew up together, with a bond to always be skinny.  They shared their disease together and encouraged one another to do whatever it took to stay strong and lose the pounds.  The scale was their enemy and they'd do whatever was necessary to never let it win.  Cassie, unfortunately, lost that battle and let her life go.  Lia is now living (or dying inside) with the thought that she could have saved her best friend, but how can she when she can't even save herself?  We're witnessing Lia's downward spiral through her own eyes.  Listening to the lies she tells herself, the calories she counts, and the hearts she shatters as she slowly slips further and further in to this abyss of what a wintergirl truly means.

I had a hard time reading this novel in parts because I could not identify with Lia or her need to control what she ate.  This sort of lifestyle is very foreign to me; however, it's shockingly a very common lifestyle among many teenage girls.  Though the issue of anorexia is something I have never personally dealt with, Laurie Halse Anderson does an amazingly well job of making you feel as though you know Lia and want to do everything in your power to reach out and help her.  In the soft moments, between the pages, when she was lying awake at night while the world slept was when I wanted to be her friend most.  My heart ached as I witnessed Lia breaking her's into tiny shreds.

Reading this book was very eye opening to me.  It brought forth a disease I had always heard about, but never truly understood.  It's not just about controlling what you eat, it's having the power to control every aspect of your life.  This need can consume someone's world and all those in it.  The story of Lia is a tough one to swallow, but it's also a gift that sheds light on the dangers of what can happen in this situation.  Some times, even the weakest can surprise us and find hope.

Rewind & Review is a monthly feature hosted by Lisa is Busy Nerding & myself, that showcases older books from our collection to read & review.