Let’s be honest: I haven’t been the target market for young adult fiction for more than a decade. That said, I loved loved loved Laurie Halse Anderson’s bestseller Speak, which told the story of a high school freshman who was raped over summer vacation and how she handles the trauma throughout the school year. Halse Anderson has published several YA novels since then, with her latest, Wintergirls, (which hits shelves today) once again tackling tough topics: eating disorders, self-mutilation, and depression. Lia, 18, and her best friend, Cassie, compete to see who can be the skinniest — that is until Cassie dies alone in a seedy motel, leaving Lia to count calories by herself and secretly spend hours on her father’s Stairmaster.
Wintergirls follows Lia as she is haunted by Cassie’s ghost and yet continues to deceive her family in an unending quest to starve herself: She sews rolls of quarters into her bathrobe to fool her stepmother when it’s time to get on the scale, and uses other people’s dirty dishes to feign a clean plate. After two stints in treatment, Lia’s parents don’t know how to reach her. Halse Anderson does an impressive job of telling the story from inside Lia’s head in a stream-of-consciousness way teenagers can easily relate to, and the intense subject matter is a worthy one for the YA set. Wintergirls will most likely make just as big of an impact as Speak.
