I read this book over the weekend. Here's my knee-jerk emotional response:
"Ew.
Ew.
Ewewewewewewewewew!"
For the record, Laurie Halse Anderson is a BRILLIANT writer. Speak, probably her most famous book, often makes my list of "favorite books" simply for how effective I found it.
Same thing's true with Wintergirls: it's beautifully written and completely painful to read.
Our main character, Lia, is anorexic and a cutter - so, you know, we're not exactly looking at a Twilight fairy tail here. She's deep into her sickness by the time the book even opens. We don't get any explanation for why she starves herself (although it becomes pretty clear by the end), we just see how far she goes to keep herself thin and "perfect."
And that's probably where a lot of the disgust I felt from the book originates. In the past, I'd come across websites dedicated to "helping" anorexics stay strong in their quest for thinness, and I came away from those sites feeling a cold outrage at how SELFISH those people are - how blind they are to the damage they do to themselves and their families, how they refuse to concede that MAYBE a third party has a better view of who they are and what kind of danger they are in.
Yeah, I'd make an absolutely terrible therapist.
Luckily, Anderson approaches the subject with a great deal more sympathy than I think I'd be able to. We understand WHY Lia cuts and WHY she refuses food, even if we don't agree with what she does. At times, Anderson's fancy prose gets in the way of clarity, but not enough to ruin the experience of reading.
Wintergirls is a painful read, but that's not to say it's a bad one. The reader comes away with an awareness of just how intense an illness anorexia can be and how profoundly tragic it is when the anorexic refuses help.
