Wintergirls

Review by New York Times Review

ANNA FREUD observed that adolescence is characterized by extreme fluctuations in behavior. It's normal, she wrote, for the teenager to be inconsistent; "to be deeply ashamed to acknowledge his mother before others, and, unexpectedly, to desire heart-to-heart talks with her; to thrive on imitation of and identification with others while searching unceasingly for his own identity; to be more idealistic, artistic, generous and unselfish than he will ever be again, but also . . . egoistic, calculating. Such fluctuations between extreme opposites would be deemed highly abnormal at any other time of life. At this time they may signify no more than that an adult structure of personality takes a long time to emerge." Anorexia, an illness of self-starvation that typically strikes in adolescence, allows for none of this dynamic push and pull. Instead, it imposes profound rigidity on experience, seems to force its captive into a labyrinth made of mirrors. There, the dialogue is only with one's self, and is of the most self-annihilating sort: "You're fat, stupid, disgusting." In that world, all wishes are inverted: to feel desire is to be weak; to resist food is to be superior; to be angry at one's parents is to cut oneself with a razor. To be is to not be. "Wintergirls," Laurie Halse Anderson's new novel, takes us into this dark, tyrannical world through the experience of Lia, the 18-year-old narrator, who has struggled with anorexia since the eighth grade. Lia is haunted by a hallucination of her dead friend, Cassie, who taunts: "You're not dead, but you're not alive, either. You're a wintergirl, Lia-Lia, caught in between the worlds. You're a ghost with a beating heart Soon you'll cross the border and be with me. I'm so stoked." The book begins on the morning when Lia is told that Cassie has died, a revelation made all the more devastating when she discovers that Cassie tried to call her during the night for help; because of a quarrel, Lia hadn't answered the phone. Written in present tense, in short sections, Lia's account of the weeks following the death, which detail her own descent into full-blown anorexia, is intercut with flashbacks - about her two failed hospitalizations ("Who wants to recover? It took me years to get that tiny. I wasn't sick; I was strong"); life before and after her parents' divorce; how she and Cassie pledged to each other, "Let's be skinniest together." Although her parents attempt to connect with her, we get the sense that over many years of struggle, a kind of cautious script is in place between all family members, so little genuine exchange occurs. In Lia's barren world, the warmest voices come from the anorexia chat rooms, which provide a chirpy camaraderie: "I need a text buddy for fasting tomorrow. . . . Please help!" At times Lia's narrow, repetitive mind-set makes her a frustrating narrator. Certainly her obsessional behaviors (counting calories, ritually berating herself) are central to the illness, but at such times Lia can feel more like a concatenation of symptoms than a distinct person. This very quality, however, may make Lia recognizable to many teenagers. One issue the author must have confronted is the potential of "Wintergirls" to be a "trigger" for anorexia, as psychologists term it. Can a novel convey, however inadvertently, an allure to anorexic behavior? While to my mind there is nothing in "Wintergirls" that glamorizes the illness, for some the mere mention of symptoms is problematic "It's about competition," an anorexia sufferer once explained to me. "Sometimes all it takes to get triggered is to read about someone who weighs less than you do." We recognize Lia, but it's sometimes hard to relate to her. Withdrawing, she sees life as if it were a series of meals to be gotten through ("I bit the days off in rows. . . . Bite. Chew. Swallow"). Parts of her story are hurried, telescoped, and this can make it hard for the reader to feel much about what is occurring. Yet the book deepens. Where Lia had been hiding the extent of her illness before Cassie died, pretending to eat, playing the part of the "good girl," increasingly, as her self-destruction gathers force, the truth emerges; the surface placidity of her life begins to crack. Faced with his daughter's obvious deterioration, Lia's father (of whom she says, "We just pretend to think about talking") speaks honestly about his frustration and rage. In a moving scene late in the book, Lia's mother, a cardiac surgeon, portrayed as compulsive and cold, breaks down in tears, and we finally see her pain and love and confusion. Elijah, a young man whom Lia comes to know after Cassie's death, someone wayward in his own right but with a sweetness and moral directness, catches Lia off guard, with his cleareyed questions. His presence invites her both to mark who she wishes she was - a healthy girl - and to grasp how far she is from being so. But no one event or person "saves" Lia; when her salvation comes, it is entirely of her own making. Anderson, the author of "Speak" and other award-winning novels for teenagers, has written a fearless, riveting account of a young woman in the grip of a deadly illness. By the end of the book, though we don't know what Lia's future will look like, she and her family have dropped their "scripts" and have begun to speak from the heart. In Lia's barren world, the warmest voices come from anorexia chat rooms. Hear a podcast with Laurie Halse Anderson and with Peter Brown ("The Curious Garden"), at nytimes.com/books. Barbara Feinberg is the author of "Welcome to Lizard Motel: Protecting the Imaginative Lives of Children."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Problem-novel fodder becomes a devastating portrait of the extremes of self-deception in this brutal and poetic deconstruction of how one girl stealthily vanishes into the depths of anorexia. Lia has been down this road before: her competitive relationship with her best friend, Cassie, once landed them both in the hospital, but now not even Cassie's death can eradicate Lia's disgust of the fat cows who scrutinize her body all day long. Her father (no, Professor Overbrook ) and her mother (no, Dr. Marrigan ) are frighteningly easy to dupe tinkering and sabotage inflate her scale readings as her weight secretly plunges: 101.30, 97.00, 89.00. 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. But this is necessary reading for anyone caught in a feedback loop of weight loss as well as any parent unfamiliar with the scripts teens recite so easily to escape from such deadly situations.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2008 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Acute anorexia, self-mutilation, dysfunctional families and the death of a childhood friend-returning to psychological minefields akin to those explored in Speak, Anderson delivers a harrowing story overlaid with a trace of mysticism. The book begins as Lia learns that her estranged best friend, Cassie, has been found dead in a motel room; Lia tells no one that, after six months of silence, Cassie called her 33 times just two days earlier, and that Lia didn't pick up even once. With Lia as narrator, Anderson shows readers how anorexia comes to dominate the lives of those who suffer from it (here, both Lia and Cassie), even to the point of fueling intense competition between sufferers. The author sets up Lia's history convincingly and with enviable economy-her driven mother is "Mom Dr. Marrigan," while her stepmother's values are summed up with a prEcis of her stepsister's agenda: "Third grade is not too young for enrichment, you know." This sturdy foundation supports riskier elements: subtle references to the myth of Persephone and a crucial plot line involving Cassie's ghost and its appearances to Lia. As difficult as reading this novel can be, it is more difficult to put down. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Wintergirls opens on the day that Lia, an anorexic, learns that her former best friend Cassie has died of her own eating disorder. Cassie had left 33 increasingly frantic messages on Lia's phone as she was dying. Now Cassie's voice haunts Lia as her disorder takes control, threatening to make her a cold "wintergirl" forever. Why It Is for Us: How do you follow-up a year in which you become a National Book Award finalist (for Chains) and win the Margaret Edwards Award for your lasting contribution to teen literature? If you are Anderson, you publish your most chilling and relevant book since Speak. The force of Lia's will as she starves herself to death is fascinating, frightening, and in every way a wakeup call to adult readers who think they have read the eating-disorder story before. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 8 Up-The intensity of emotion and vivid language here are more reminiscent of Anderson's Speak (Farrar, 1999) than any of her other works. Lia and Cassie had been best friends since elementary school, and each developed her own style of eating disorder that leads to disaster. Now 18, they are no longer friends. Despite their estrangement, Cassie calls Lia 33 times on the night of her death, and Lia never answers. As events play out, Lia's guilt, her need to be thin, and her fight for acceptance unravel in an almost poetic stream of consciousness in this startlingly crisp and pitch-perfect first-person narrative. The text is rich with words still legible but crossed out, the judicious use of italics, and tiny font-size refrains reflecting her distorted internal logic. All of the usual answers of specialized treatment centers, therapy, and monitoring of weight and food fail to prevail while Lia's cleverness holds sway. What happens to her in the end is much less the point than traveling with her on her agonizing journey of inexplicable pain and her attempt to make some sense of her life.-Carol A. Edwards, Denver Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

(High School) "It's not nice when girls die," observes Lia, who suffers from anorexia and an addiction to cutting herself. Lia has just heard that her estranged friend Cassie was found dead, alone, in a motel room -- this after leaving Lia thirty-three messages, none of which she listened to until it was too late. Cassie's death tips the already fragile Lia into a painful, spooky vortex of self-destruction. The specter of Cassie (who died of a burst esophagus, the result of violent bulimia) haunts her; her busy, divorced parents fail to take adequate action; and even Lia's love for her stepsister can't dispel her disordered visions. Crossed-out words and phrases show the double voices of anorexia vs. healthy reason and illustrate the disconnect between perception and reality. Anderson conveys Lia's illness vividly through her dark, fantastic thoughts -- full of images of tangled, spiky vegetation and continuous, bitter rejection of her parents. To read this stream-of-consciousness, first-person, present-tense work is to be drawn into an anorexic mentality (grotesque descriptions of food, calories assigned to every morsel), and therefore not for every reader, though it makes for a tense, illuminating tale. Why Lia's parents don't intervene is puzzling (familiar as they are with the behaviors and dangers of this mortal disease); but in effect it allows Anderson to demonstrate that Lia's healing must come from her own desire to live. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Neither therapy nor threats nor her exbest friend's death can turn Lia away from her habits of cutting and self-starvation. In broken, symbolic and gut-wrenching prose, Lia narrates her hopeless story of the destructive behaviors that control her every action and thought. She lives for both the thrill and the crash of not eating, and any progress she may have made toward normal eating is erased when her former best friend Cassie dies alone in a hotel room. The trauma of Cassie's death coupled with Lia's strained relationship with her parents and stepmother makes her tighten her focus on not eating as she slides into a world of starvation-induced hallucinations. Uncontrollable self-accusations ("Stupid/ugly/stupid/bitch/stupid/fat") and compulsive calorie counts punctuate her claustrophobic account, which she edits chillingly to control her world. Anderson perfectly captures the isolation and motivations of the anorexic without ever suggesting that depression and eating disorders are simply things to "get over." Due to the author's and the subject's popularity, this should be a much-discussed book, which rises far above the standard problem novel. (Fiction. YA) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1   So she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.   She tells me in four sentences. No, five.   I can't let me hear this, but it's too late. The facts sneak in and stab me. When she gets to the worst part   . . . body found in a motel room, alone . . .   . . . my walls go up and my doors lock. I nod like I'm listening, like we're communicating, and she never knows the difference.   It's not nice when girls die.   2   "We didn't want you hearing it at school or on the news." Jennifer crams the last hunk of muffin into her mouth. "Are you sure you're okay?"   I open the dishwasher and lean into the cloud of steam that floats out of it. I wish I could crawl in and curl up between a bowl and a plate. (My stepmother) Jennifer could lock the door, twist the dial to SCALD, and press ON.   The steam freezes when it touches my face. "I'm fine," I lie.   She reaches for the box of oatmeal raisin cookies on the table. "This must feel awful." She rips off the cardboard ribbon. "Worse than awful. Can you get me a clean container?"   I take a clear plastic box and lid out of the cupboard and hand it across the island to her. "Where's Dad?"   "He had a tenure meeting."   "Who told you about Cassie?"   She crumbles the edges of the cookies before she puts them in the box, to make it look like she baked instead of bought. "Your mother called late last night with the news. She wants you to see Dr. Parker right away instead of waiting for your next appointment."   "What do you think?" I ask.   "It's a good idea," she says. "I'll see if she can fit you in this afternoon."   "Don't bother." I pull out the top rack of the dishwasher. The glasses vibrate with little screams when I touch them. If I pick them up, they'll shatter. "There's no point."   She pauses in mid-crumble. "Cassie was your best friend."   "Not anymore. I'll see Dr. Parker next week like I'm supposed to."   "I guess it's your decision. Will you promise me you'll call your mom and talk to her about it?"   "Promise."   Jennifer looks at the clock on the microwave and shouts, "Emma--four minutes!"   (My stepsister) Emma doesn't answer. She's in the family room, hypnotized by the television and a bowl of blue cereal.   Jennifer nibbles a cookie. "I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I'm glad you didn't hang out with her anymore."   I push the top rack back in and pull out the bottom. "Why?"   "Cassie was a mess. She could have taken you down with her."   I reach for the steak knife hiding in the nest of spoons. The black handle is warm. As I pull it free, the blade slices the air, dividing the kitchen into slivers. There is Jennifer, packing store-bought cookies in a plastic tub for her daughter's class. There is Dad's empty chair, pretending he has no choice about these early meetings. There is the shadow of my mother, who prefers the phone because face-to-face takes too much time and usually ends in screaming.   Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it.   . . . body found in a motel room, alone . . .   Someone just ripped off my eyelids.   "Thank God you're stronger than she was." Jennifer drains her coffee mug and wipes the crumbs from the corners of her mouth.   The knife slides into the butcher block with a whisper. "Yeah." I reach for a plate, scrubbed free of blood and gristle. It weighs ten pounds.   She snaps the lid on the box of cookies. "I have a late settlement appointment. Can you take Emma to soccer? Practice starts at five."   "Which field?"   "Richland Park, out past the mall. Here." She hands the heavy mug to me, her lipstick a bloody crescent on the rim. I set it on the counter and unload the plates one at a time, arms shaking.   Emma comes into the kitchen and sets her cereal bowl, half-filled with sky-colored milk, next to the sink.   "Did you remember the cookies?" she asks her mother.   Jennifer shakes the plastic container. "We're late, honey. Get your stuff."   Emma trudges toward her backpack, her sneaker laces flopping. She should still be sleeping, but my father's wife drives her to school early four mornings a week for violin lessons and conversational French. Third grade is not too young for enrichment, you know.   Jennifer stands up. The fabric of her skirt is pulled so tight over her thighs, the pockets gape open. She tries to smooth out the wrinkles. "Don't let Emma con you into buying chips before practice. If she's hungry, she can have a fruit cup."   "Should I stick around and drive her home?"   She shakes her head. "The Grants will do it." She takes her coat off the back of the chair, puts her arms in the sleeves, and starts to button up. "Why don't you have one of the muffins? I bought oranges yesterday, or you could have toast or frozen waffles."   (Because I can't let myself want them) because I don't need a muffin (410), I don't want an orange (75) or toast (87), and waffles (180) make me gag.   I point to the empty bowl on the counter, next to the huddle of pill bottles and the Bluberridazzlepops box. "I'm having cereal."   Her eyes dart to the cabinet where she had taped up my meal plan. It came with the discharge papers when I moved in six months ago. I took it down three months later, on my eighteenth birthday.   "That's too small to be a full serving," she says carefully.   (I could eat the entire box) I probably won't even fill the bowl. "My stomach's upset."   She opens her mouth again. Hesitates. A sour puff of coffee-stained morning breath blows across the still kitchen and splashes into me. Don't say it--don'tsayit.   "Trust, Lia."   She said it.   "That's the issue. Especially now. We don't want . . ."   If I weren't so tired, I'd shove trust and issue down the garbage disposal and let it run all day.   I pull a bigger bowl out of the dishwasher and put it on the counter. "I. Am. Fine. Okay?"   She blinks twice and finishes buttoning her coat. "Okay. I understand. Tie your sneakers, Emma, and get in the car."   Emma yawns.   "Hang on." I bend down and tie Emma's laces. Doubleknotted. I look up. "I can't keep doing this, you know. You're way too old."   She grins and kisses my forehead. "Yes you can, silly."   As I stand up, Jennifer takes two awkward steps toward me. I wait. She is a pale, round moth, dusted with eggshell foundation, armed for the day with her banker's briefcase, purse, and remote starter for the leased SUV. She flutters, nervous.   I wait.   This is where we should hug or kiss or pretend to.   She ties the belt around her middle. "Look . . . just keep moving today. Okay? Try not to think about things too much."    "Right."   "Say good-bye to your sister, Emma," Jennifer prompts.   "Bye, Lia." Emma waves and gives me a small berridazzle smile. "The cereal is really good. You can finish the box if you want."   3   I pour too much cereal (150) in the bowl, splash on the two-percent milk (125). Breakfast is themostimportantmealoftheday. Breakfast will make me a cham-pee-on.   . . . When I was a real girl, with two parents and one house and no blades flashing, breakfast was granola topped with fresh strawberries, always eaten while reading a book propped up on the fruit bowl. At Cassie's house we'd eat waffles with thin syrup that came from maple trees, not the fake corn syrup stuff, and we'd read the funny pages. . . .   No. I can't go there. I won't think. I won't look.   I won't pollute my insides with Bluberridazzlepops or muffins or scritchscratchy shards of toast, either. Yesterday's dirt and mistakes have moved through me. I am shiny and pink inside, clean. Empty is good. Empty is strong.   But I have to drive.   . . . I drove last year, windows down, music cranked, first Saturday in October, flying to the SATs. I drove so Cassie could put the top coat on her nails. We were secret sisters with a plan for world domination, potential bubbling around us like champagne. Cassie laughed. I laughed. We were perfection.   Did I eat breakfast? Of course not. Did I eat dinner the night before, or lunch, or anything?   The car in front of us braked as the traffic light turned yellow, then red. My flip-flop hovered above the pedal. My edges blurred. Black squiggle tingles curled up my spine and wrapped around my eyes like a silk scarf. The car in front of us disappeared. The steering wheel, the dashboard, vanished. There was no Cassie, no traffic light. How was I supposed to stop this thing?   Cassie screamed in slow motion.   ::Marshmallow/air/explosion/bag::   When I woke up, the emt-person and a cop were frowning. The driver whose car I smashed into was screaming into his cell phone.   My blood pressure was that of a cold snake. My heart was tired. My lungs wanted a nap. They stuck me with a needle, inflated me like a state-fair balloon, and shipped me off to a hospital with steel-eyed nurses who wrote down every bad number. In pen. Busted me.   Mom and Dad rushed in, side by side for a change, happy that I was not dead. A nurse handed my chart to my mother. She read through it and explained the disaster to my father and then they fought, a mudslide of an argument that spewed across the antiseptic sheets and out into the hall. I was stressed/overscheduled/manic/no--depressed/no--in need of attention/no--in need of discipline/in need of rest/in need/your fault/your fault/fault/fault. They branded their war on this tiny skin-bag of a girl.   Phone calls were made. My parents force-marched me into (hell on the hill) New Seasons. . . .   Cassie escaped, as usual. Not a scratch. Insurance more than covered the damage, so she wound up with a fixed car and new speakers. Our mothers had a little talk, but really all girls go through these things and what are you going to do? Cassie rescheduled for the next test and got her nails done at a salon, Enchanted Blue, while they locked me up and dripped sugar water into my empty veins. . . .   Lesson learned. Driving requires fuel.   Not Emma's Bluberridazzlepop cereal. I shiver and pour most of the soggy mess down the disposal, then set the bowl on the floor. Emma's cats, Kora and Pluto, pad across the kitchen and stick their heads in the bowl. I draw a cartoon face with a big tongue on a sticky note, write YUMMY, EMMA! THANKS! and slap it on the cereal box.   I eat ten raisins (16) and five almonds (35) and a greenbellied pear (121) (= 172). The bites crawl down my throat. I eat my vitamins and the crazy seeds that keep my brain from exploding: one long purple, one fat white, two poppyred. I wash everybody down with hot water.   They better work quick. The voice of a dead girl is waiting for me on my phone. Excerpted from Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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