Book 17. Wintergirls.

Title: Wintergirls
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Pages: 278
Date Started: Feb 15th, 2011
Date Finished: Feb 15th, 2011
Did you like it?  Before I go on about this review, I would like to state that I had no idea it was about anorexia/bulimia. My wonderful library filed it under "Fun Winter Reads" and though yes, it was just WOW to read, it wasn't exactly "fun" or "winter-related". With that all being said, yes I did enjoy it. Though in the course of reading it, I became very food oriented...was I hungry? If the answer was yes, did I really need to eat or could I be stronger than my hunger? This book was touching and terrifying all at the same time. Being a person who loves food, it was odd to see things through the eyes of someone who obsessed over being the smallest person in her highschool. But the book is about more than that. Lia was a strong female lead, she always wanted to be in control and when she wasn't she kind of fell apart. But in the case of this novel, it wasn't the characters that made me love it so much, it was the writing, the beautiful writing and plot of one Laurie Halse Anderson that won this book it's 6 out of 6 from me.

What's it about? 

 “Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls. “Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another. I am that girl. I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame. 
Lia and Cassie were best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies. But now Cassie is dead. Lia's mother is busy saving other people's lives. Her father is away on business. Her step-mother is clueless. And the voice inside Lia's head keeps telling her to remain in control, stay strong, lose more, weigh less. If she keeps on going this way—thin, thinner, thinnest—maybe she'll disappear altogether. 
In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the National Book Award finalist Speak, best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson explores one girl's chilling descent into the all-consuming vortex of anorexia.

I think that description does the novel a lot of justice. There wasn't a lot of meat to the book, and that was really just fine. It was more about the progression of Lia into the darkness and then coming back to the light when it seemed like it was almost the end that this book is really all about.