The descriptions are so lyrical and offbeat that it’s not even like reading poetry – it’s more like poetry washing over you. On the other hand, it’s an intensely evocative book. Wintergirls can be an unnerving read, especially the parts where Lia starts cutting herself. Finally Lia has to confront the choices she and Cassie made, and decide whether she wants to walk out of the woods. The days grow darker as the year slides into winter, and her body becomes easier to hide under sweaters. Well, two things, if you count the knife she keeps hidden. But the stress of her parents’ worry about her – which includes weekly weighing-in sessions and monitoring what she eats – starts to take a toll too, and sometimes there’s only one thing that makes Lia feel better. While Lia and her mother are all but estranged, she has a younger sister who looks up to her and whom she loves.
Except what Cassie really wants isn’t to punish Lia, it’s to bring her into “dangerland”, and then give her that final push over the edge, so they can be together again. It knows exactly what to say to hurt her. The ghost may or may not be a manifestation of Lia’s conscience, but whatever it is, it’s terrifying. Lia’s struggle with both her eating disorder and her guilt is heightened when Cassie’s ghost appears to her at night. Their friendship had disintegrated by then, though, partly because of the pressure from their parents, so Lia didn’t pick up. Cassie is dead – but on the night she went on her final binge, she called Lia thirty-three times. Lia, after therapy for her anorexia, lives with her father and stepmother.
Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls begins with the fallout of that promise. They were going to do whatever it took to be completely in control of their bodies, to be thin, to be thinner, to be perfect. They had each other’s backs, they shared secrets, and they made a promise sealed in blood. Lia Overbrook and Cassie Parrish were once best friends.
0 kommentar(er)
