Children's Book Review: Wintergirls

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking, $17.99, 9780670011100/067001110X, 288 pp., ages 12-up)

On the 10th anniversary of the publication of her book Speak, Anderson presents a tale every bit as haunting and immediate as her debut novel. In many ways, 18-year-old Lia Marrigan Overbrook is as silent as Melinda Sordino in Speak--at least concerning the things that really matter. In the opening scene, Lia's stepmother, Jennifer, tells her that her former best friend, Cassandra Jane Parrish, is dead, "found in a motel room, alone." Lia will not or cannot talk about the nonstop voices in her head ("body found in a motel room, alone") or the fact that, after six months of the silent treatment, Cassie left 33 messages on Lia's cell phone the night before her death. Once again, Anderson uses her heroine's internal dialogue to stunning effect, allowing readers to follow Lia's diseased thinking, the toxic chanting inside her head ("::Stupid/ugly/stupid/bitch/stupid/fat/stupid/baby/stupid/loser/stupid/lost::") and the constant calorie-counting ("I eat in my car: diet soda (0) + lettuce (15) + 8 tablespoons salsa (40) + hard-boiled egg white (16) = Lunch (71)").
 
As she tries to cope with the present, Lia reflects on her past with Cassie, who moved in across the street in the winter of third grade. Lia first discovered Cassie puking at age 11, and soon after Lia's parents divorced, when she was 12, Lia started cutting ("Cassie became the roller coaster in the theme park of middle school. I was the merry-go-round horse frozen in one position, eyes painted open, paint chipping off my eyes . . . "). Anderson, keenly aware of the life-or-death tightrope Lia walks, counterbalances the gravity of the situation with Lia's loving friendship with her eight-year-old stepsister, Emma, and also the zinging wit of the heroine's rebelliousness. Lia's internal monologue retains the kind of poetry that results from a well-read, highly intelligent person detached from her own reality. Her heightened senses pick up the aromas of gingerbread and cinnamon, the frigid temperatures that her defenseless body experiences and every subtle nuance in her parents' words and actions. Crossed out words in the narrative reveal the thoughts that come naturally to Lia that she compulsively represses ("The doughnutsbagels smell heavenly plus sugar and I know what one taste I have to eat a little of something or she'll go nuts . . . "); these usually follow intense feelings ("Across the street, Mrs. Parrish is walking through a daughterless house, a Cassieless kitchen"). As Cassie's ghost begins to haunt Lia ever more aggressively, readers also see how much the adults around Lia are trying to protect her from herself. But no one can save Lia except Lia, and readers will be rooting for this heroine to fight for her life.--Jennifer M. Brown