Thursday, April 16, 2009

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson


Cassie died. Alone. After calling Lia thirty-three times. After Lia refused to answer thirty-three times. She died in a motel room. The papers hint at a drug overdose, but no one has a definitive answer. Lia lies to herself. She's fine. Not broken and sad and stuck like everyone thinks she is or thinks she should be. She lies to the scale, with her belly full of water and quarters in her pockets. The scale lies to her stepmother. 107.00, it says. No reason to worry. Lia's getting better. Don't send her back to that hell, New Seasons, where they stuffed her full of butter. Empty is strong. Why can't she just eat like everyone else? Empty is strong. Just one cupcake would be heaven. Empty is strong. But one cupcake would turn into two and three and four, until she got back to where she started. Empty is strong. Fatuglystupid, must not eat. Empty is strong. Cassie understood.

This book... this is what I was looking for. Something different and engaging and chilling and wonderful. The writing style was beautiful, to say the least, and made the book memorable. This is definitely not one of those books that you forget a week after you've read it. The fact that it was a gorgeously written novel made it seem absolutely creepy. I say creepy in the best way possible here. It just reached right down into me and made me care. I wanted to yell at Lia and make her eat something. I wanted to scream at her mother and father, for just letting her slip away. Most of all, I wanted to give Emma a hug.

6.5 out of 7 pomegranate seeds (ohhhhh... just got the Persephone reference) for Wintergirls.

Wishing the sun would come out,

1 comment:

Caroline said...

I've been DYING to read this book-I haven't read a great story that dealt with it since How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, but this looks amazing.

Awesome review as always. :)