Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Anderson, Laurie Halse (2009). Wintergirls. NY: Viking. 288 pages.
I think that I must be a terrible person: I did not like Wintergirls. Not hardly at all. Before I tell you why, let me just provide a bare bones (ha!) sketch of the plot for the two folks who (besides me as of a couple of weeks ago) haven’t yet read Anderson’s acclaimed novel. Seventeen-year-old Lia hasn’t spoken with her best friend Cassie in over a year, so when she receives a series of cell phone calls from Cassie late one night, she doesn’t bother answering. When Cassie’s body is discovered and Lia realizes that she had been calling her the night she died, Lia’s tentative recovery from anorexia (she and Cassie had, prior to the dissolution of their friendship, engaged in disordered eating behaviors together) ceases and she finds herself returning to her old and oddly comforting ways.
So this book does something that I really resent (unless used in the most unselfconscious and self-aggrandizing way possible, a la H.P. Lovecraft): it relies upon conventions of print to convey emotion. And sure, lots of books–for adults and YAs alike–use “handwriting” style fonts to demonstrate a change in narrative voice and even to suggest something about the personality of the narrator; however, most of us recognize this for the cheap shorthand it is and, when we see this in popular literature, recognize it as a trope. In Wintergirls, Anderson uses tiny font and itallics to distinguish emotive or provocative passages, so that we find paragraphs or sections of the book ending in an italicized sentence like a story from Weird Tales. Furthermore, Anderson engages in the old unreliable narrator tell by depicting Lia’s real feelings and emotions as crossed out text placed beside the actual narrated text. And yes, I know this is supposed to convey the depth of Lia’s self-deception and unwillingness to feel her own emotions, even inside her head, but come on, man! These are just cheap tricks.
While Wintergirls is primarily about Lia’s eating disorder, a contributing factor in the form of her divorced parents and their relationships with each other and with Lia provide (in my opinion) the most interesting reading. Lia’s friendship with the boy who found Cassie’s body allows an unconventional character foil to make an appearance here, too.
Okay, so I didn’t totally hate the book. I just resent (1) the cheap typographical techniques employed by either the author or the designer (or perhaps both) and (2) the critical reception of this novel that, in my opinion, doesn’t really break any new ground for the problem novel or for the eating disorder narrative. Also, there’s, like, a really, really long page of acknowledgments at the end of the novel which seems sort of out of place and–as they describe, in part, the author’s consultation with experts in an attempt to depict Lia’s physical and psychological deterioration accurately–just serves to highlight the somewhat over-constructed nature of the story.
Posted on June 6, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I feel better now that I know (in print, no less) that I’m not the only person bothered by the typography (and by the underlying assumption that without the typography, I wouldn’t “get” the novel). I did like the family interaction, too, and thought that really, the whole book could be about just that. It’s kind of like that TV show, “Medium,” where the real pleasure is found not in the mysteries, but in watching the family interact.
Posted on June 6, 2009 at 12:29 am
I basically agree with you on your review of “Wintergirls.” The fonts and strikethroughs of despair were grating. I did like Lia’s interactions with her parents and stepsister. I liked that she was drowning under the weight of her illness and that she clearly had OTHER mental health issues concurrent with her anorexia.
Overall, compelling enough to keep me reading, but not a keeper. I don’t want to be That Jerk, but I haven’t found any of Anderson’s later efforts as awesome as “Speak.”