Review: Wintergirls

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This did not do it for me. The writing style is distracting, and the character portrayal of Lia does not encourage any empathy or sympathy. I simply did not care about Lia whether she lived or died. Lia knows she has a problem. Lia doesn't want to get better. Lia blames everyone else for her problem, her parents, the divorce, Cassie, etc. Lia actively lies and cheats and manipulate people for her own ends. Lia is selfish and spoilt. Lia is a cry for help because she doesn't really want to die, she just want to see if anyone notices her if she hurt herself enough. But she doesn't see that people DID notice, and people DID want to help, but she's in too deep to get herself out again. So she aggressively fights everyone else in order to STAY ill. She WANTS to be ill 98% of the book.

I feel if a book is written in a first-person POV, we shouldn't be left feeling that Lia is selfish, spoilt, manipulative and unreasonable because Lia won't see herself that way. It needs to be written in Lia's voice and Lia's reasonings, but I just don't get that feeling. I didn't get to know Lia. I didn't know how she thought. It was all very superficial. The author did not step into Lia's shoes - she simply wrote a fiction about ED as an outsider, with a pinch of judgemental lightly sprinkled through in the book, whilst pretending it's a first-person POV. It probably would've worked better if the author had written a fiction about a parent dealing with a child with an ED.

Her sister Emma, however, is very loveable, as little as we read of her.

I'm not attacking ED in general, it is a real problem, I just did not care much for the book and how it was written. Portia de Rossi's book on her battle with anorexia, Unbearable Lightness, reads much better, feels real (probably because it IS real), and I could actually sympathise with her. She made one understand the mindset of a person suffering from, and battling with an ED.



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