Wintergirls

Title: Wintergirls

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Date Finished: June 5, 2010

Personal Book Count: 33 our of 100

Rating: 4 out of 5

Genre/ Subject: young adult book

First Line: So she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.

Why did I pick this book?: lots of buzz in the blogging communities.

Summary and Review: summary taken from goodreads.com-

“Eighteen-year-old Lia comes to terms with her best friend's death from bulimia as she struggles with anorexia.”

I don’t know if enjoyed is the right word for this book. Compelled would probably be more appropriate. Most of the time, this is a very grim story, one I often walked away from sad. And yet, I couldn’t stop coming back to it. Many problems are addressed, the big one being anorexia, but also including, in various degrees, death of a friend, drugs, cutting (I wonder if it is common for cutting and anorexia to show up together?), schizophrenia (hearing voices), and familial relationships. As you can imagine, it was disturbing and difficult to read. It gave me an insight into the disease, which i would have had, if i did not read it. Out of all honesty, I can’t say I knew a lot about it to begin with. The main characters thoughts through the book, sound at the same time crazy, but logical. A healthy person wouldn’t think that way, but you can follow her logic and see how she thinks what she does. I like the way the author gives us crossed out sections of text, so we do get these glimpse of her thoughts. We are shown the disconnect from her family, for example, when she thinks of her mom as Dr. Marrigan. The author has a way for using very poetic/ descriptive language through out the book. The story has so many levels, I felt I needed to finish it, to find out all the separate story line endings. (I am a stickler for endings, and I found this one satisfying.) I think it is a combination of these two things that intrigued me to follow through this book. I would recommend this book to older teens and adults.

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D