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Cindy: “It’s not nice when girls die.” Ten years ago Laurie Halse Anderson gifted teen readers with her first YA novel, Speak, about a girl dealing with depression following a date rape. In Wintergirls (Penguin/Viking, 2009), Anderson is as unflinching and honest in presenting Lia, who learns on page one of chapter {001.00} that an anorexic friend has died “…body found in a hotel room, alone…” A friend who left 33 unanswered voice mail messages on Lia’s phone. A friend that Lia had something in common with. Lia is anorexic too.

I can’t remember having a book I was more eager to read but could not bring myself to open. It took me months to finally brave where Lia’s journey would take me. Anderson takes us inside the head of a girl who is seriously ill and yet manages to trick and hide it from those around her. The details of her eating disorder are horrific but it’s the mental descent that is the most troubling to experience. I’ve read questions on listservs from well-meaning, concerned adults who wonder if this will become a “how-to” manual for budding anorexics. I appreciate their concerns, but a bigger concern is that we do not talk about this elephant in the teenage living room. Last week I was giving booktalks to 8th graders in both of my middle schools and with this book fresh on my mind and not enough copies to meet demand, I shared a number of other titles both fiction and nonfiction from Margaret Willey’s 1983 novel, The Bigger Book of Lydia to more recent fare like Skin by Adrienne Vrettos. They flew out of the library. Every teen girl knows someone affected by an eating disorder. We need to read and talk about this issue and I expect that Wintergirls, a mesmerizing and haunting read, will open more doors for discussion, just as Speak has done. Listen to Laurie’s poem composed from snips from letters she received from girls and boys in the ten years since the publication of Speak. It makes me cry every time I listen.

We’ve recommended Wintergirls for grades 9-12, as have most of the professional reviews (the book has at least five starred reviews as of this writing) but I definitely have included it in my middle school libraries. I’ll be booktalking it to the 8th graders, but just this week a 6th grade girl asked me if I’d read it. “It was so sad,” she said, “but so important.”

Lynn: There is a lot to talk about in this emotionally charged book. It is Lia’s narrative that dominates the reading experience and Anderson plays with some structural devices that underscore the self-deception that marks her condition. Lia’s diary includes strike-through words reflecting thoughts she denies followed by words reflecting the rigid control she is working so hard to impose.

“I could eat the entire box I probably won’t even fill the bowl.”

Anderson intensifies Lia’s obsession with food morsels by indicating the caloric content of each and every morsel.

“I don’t need a muffin (410), I don’t want an orange (75) or toast (87), and waffles (180) make me gag.”

Lia is fighting a war with herself and the battlefield is her body. Anderson makes us embedded witnesses to the carnage Lia inflicts upon herself. Wonderfully crafted prose and brilliant phrases such as, “My pink mouse stomach likes to be small and empty,” sharpen the impact. This is a book that will reward multiple reads, threaded with thematic references to Persephone and to descent and resurrection.

I do have some quibbles but feel almost churlish in bringing them up. The parents never felt well realized to me, too naive and ignorant especially as Lia has been hospitalized twice before – too easily fooled. I felt that Elijah never evolved beyond plot convenience to believable character. None of these diminishes the wrenching power of this book or the profound impact on its audience. Booktalk this once – that’s all you’ll have to do. The teens will take it from there. Just make sure you have lots of copies.

UPDATE: We just published this blog post a few minutes ago and in Cindy’s facebook update was a link to this article about a Ralph Lauren advertisement photo that has been altered to make the model look oddly thin. The article mentions some websites that are monitoring these unhealthy body images of women and girls as portrayed by the media. What are we doing to our girls?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Emotional Problems, Fiction, Gr. 9-12, Grief. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.