WINTERGIRLS

Narrator Jeannie Stith delivers this story’s introductory scenes with brutal harshness as Lia learns that her best friend, Cassie, has been discovered dead in a hotel room. The two best friends had been competitors in anorexia. Stith's staccato delivery is fitting for the embattled Lia, who hides her self-starvation and cutting from the perplexed adults who want to save her. Stith whispers Lia’s compulsive calorie counting and uses a muffled voice to deliver the haunting speeches that Lia believes are coming from Cassie’s restless spirit. In her text Anderson uses italics, parentheses, and cross-outs to create visual representations of Lia's torment; in the narration the tones used to differentiate these are somewhat distracting. Still, Stith takes listeners deep into Lia's dark and frightening fight for survival. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2010 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2009]