Psych2Go 56 BOOK REVIEW: WINTERGIRLS By: Hannah Jade Book Review Anderson, L. H., & Viking. (2009). Wintergirls. New York: Viking.
ISSUE 1 While well written and an interesting read, “Wintergirls” is definitely not representative of what it is like to have an eating disorder. The book opens with a description of how Cassie, Lia’s best friend of 10 years, has been found dead in the room of a motel. Lia is the main character of the novel, which documents her struggles with anorexia, which she has personified with the name “ana”. It appears to me that the author’s research into bulimia and anorexia may not have spanned further than researching pro *ana and *mia websites. A lot of the way things are written seem to romanticize eating disorders, rather than show what kind of torture they are. Lia called herself strong for keeping herself “empty”. Cassie had been bulimic and was influencing her friend to be the same, which actually made Lia’s parents somewhat grateful that she had died. I thought that was a bit of a harsh way to introduce the stepmother in a scene. I understand that they could have been blaming her for the eating disorder of the child they were raising, however wouldn’t a death of your child’s best friend warrant a response that was more caring and trying to help your struggling child rather than tarnishing their late best friend’s name? I don’t know really, as I thought the way the stepmother was shown was extremely cold, even though most of the time she was making an attempt to help out. A lot of the book the narration is disconnected and it feels cold. The chapters are titled in the way that she would weigh herself and write down the weight (00.0) which I thought was interesting. Stylistically, the book somewhat resembles a diary. It is written in a very poetic style, but I didn’t hate the poeticism as much as I hate anything like that by Sharon Creech. (I’m looking at you, Heartbeat). However, a lot of the time the author will cross out words to show what the character was thinking at first but then changed their mind to state differently. Things like “stepmother” crossed out to say Jennifer. She also refers to any type of food as either a number or a color. The numbers represent the calories in the food she is discussing. There are a lot of scenes that are graphically about self harm and intense self deprecation on Lia’s part both mentally and physically. She realized that Cassie had called her 47 times on the night of her death, and a part of what is making her so stressed out and ill is that she blames herself for not being there for her friend. The hotel in which Cassie died has a person named Elijah working there and he and Lia form an unlikely friendship. It’s very strange to watch this person’s world unravel. We find out that Cassie died from a ruptured esophagus and Lia had actually had some points where she sabotaged Cassie’s attempts to recover from bulimia- the disease that ultimately killed her. Cassie had left a message for Lia - that she was the skinniest, and she had won. As if it was some sort of competition, again the glorification of a weight achieved by means of an eating disorder. The book describes the changes in her body and it gets increasingly emaciated, which shows the brutality of what happens with an eating disorder. The very end of the book Lia is cutting herself, and her stepsister Emma who absolutely adores her walks in. It ends on this note and doesn’t allow further elaboration, so one can only make assumptions about where to go from there. Overall, the book was decent, however I found it slightly romanticizing eating disorders and who can be the sickest, but I have not suffered from bulimia or anorexia, so I would leave people with more authority on that to judge better. All in all the book was easy to read, well written, and interesting. I think research could have been better, but overall it was a good read. *ana – short for Anorexia Nervosa *mia – short for Bulimia 57