Wintergirls
By Laurie Halse Anderson
Wintergirls is one of those touchy books you may read in the
circle of the YA Readings. It
develops around Lia. Who, once, had a best friend named Cassie, and they both
have eating disorders. They made this pact/challenge of who of them would be
the skinniest girl in the city –or even the world-. Then they would be
glorified and they would feel like they have accomplished the goal of their
lives. But then, it’s nothing out of normal, they are just teenagers, right?
And then they became a bulimic with an anorexic.
Two bodies in pure bones.
Two girls completely at the lost.
A toxic relationship.
At the beginning of the book Lia gets really bad news that
sets her on a spiral down during the whole book. Through it she shows us how an
anorexic girl can survive and deceived her fathers, especially when she has
been on treatment several times. She will eat a certain portion of calories a
day, and sometime she would puke them out, or just exhaust herself with
exercises –even when her body doesn’t even respond to her commands-. That’s
what they do to be a perfect girl.
But what it’s a perfect girl?
So I want to point it out the good thing the book has, and I
think the most important it is: It’s
real, people!
Many of the things that happen in the book, in Lia’s live
are just normal thing that this Wintergirls go through.
The websites, the post, the advices, the talks and the
diets.
Each and every one of them is real. Ana’s or Anorexics have
an extreme diet than sometimes they just can eat up to 200 calories a day; when
the normal diet of a person it’s between 1,500 and 2,000 calories per day. The
suffering, the anxiety, the depressions and any co morbid mental issue than
exist can easily exist in a person with an eating disorder. Lia is a teenager
whose parents’ status has made a change in her. She goes through a hundred of
stages, and makes a lot of people miserable in order to reach her goals, one at
a time. She tricks them into believe she is good, healing, adjusting… She can’t
understand how a normal person thinks, she can’t even understand why she isn’t
the way she wants.
Now, the crosswords were a little overpowering, but I could
understand the teenager factor in it. I like that the chapter’s numbers were
related to the story. And of course, I didn’t like Lia. Oddly, it’s the first
book where I didn’t like anything, anything about the lead role. But I know
why.
I’m not an Ana.
I don’t live her
life.
I don’t want to
live that life.
I can’t comprehend why she is always so selfish, with her
parents, stepmother, her step sister, the guy she meets, Cassie…
But after reading the book, I did a little bit of research
and I was stunned. The world isn’t perfect. Not everybody is happy with their
own being. Not everybody wants to be better, meaning being normal.
There are people out there suffering in silence, because they want to suffer, and a lot
of them being happy while killing themselves, starving themselves.
1 of every 5 deaths of anorexia are for suicide. And the
anorexia has the highest rate of death in mental illness, surpassing even the Schizophrenia. And the coo morbid most
common on the persons with eating-disorders it’s the depression.
This book is annoying, but it makes us conscious about
things than once, when I started reading this book a year ago couldn’t
understand. But now I do, and I’m glad someone had the balls to write something
so explicit and real about a disorder like this.
So, finally, that’s why my rating its high.
Have you read Wintergirls? If so, what did you think? If not, what are you waiting for?!
