VC Andrews FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC
(Resurrecting the oldies write off 2006)
When I saw this book listed at Epinions.com I just had so many thoughts and ideas come to mind that I had to write about it. This book is an oldie to me and it fit right in to the resurrecting the oldies write off.
Flowers in the Attic is about the Dollanganger family. A family with six beautiful people. All flaxen haired and gorgeous with the “we have it all” appearance. This family had a Mom and a Dad. It had four beautiful children, Christopher, Cathy, Cory and Carrie. The father in this perfect family is killed suddenly in an automobile accident. The mother Corrine, cannot handle this disaster as her perfect world crumbles around her. She takes her four beautiful children to the home of her horrid and abusive mother and father; where these four children become the Flowers in the Attic.
The children are kept in the attic of the family mansion for three years. Here they are starved, beaten, and neglected. They are eventually poisoned by their grandmother who calls them “Devil’s Spawn” because it turns out that their perfect mother and father were actually half uncle and neice.
This story is filled with lies, deceit, suspense, murder, horror and just plain sadness. Yet, when I was in 8th (way back in 1980s) grade it was the most captivating story I had ever had the opportunity to read. I remember watching as all of the girls I knew spent hours reading and rereading this story just as I did. This book was a topic of conversation over lunch periods in the school cafeteria. We all waited eagerly for the release of Petals on the Wind so that we could read the sequel. I remember running home with my copy of this story so that I could read about Cathy and Chris after they escaped the house.
As I look back on it now, it is really a terribly written story. I remember how at one point in the story they escaped the house by climbing down the roof and went swimming in the lake. I remember how Chris and Cathy returned to the house after swimming by climbing back up to the attic. Now that I look at it I have to wonder why the heck they did not go to the police then. I think about this story and realize that these kids had more than one opportunity to leave the house and the stuff that happened to them is really far fetched. But to me then, it was amazing. It forced me to step out of my own “perfect” life. I remember reading that story and thinking how I wished I could jump into the pages and save these four children. I remember crying my heart out when little Cory died and poor little Carrie was left twinless. I was so angry when Christopher was beaten.
This book was being read by nearly every female my age back then. I remember that my mother had no interest in the book. I have to question why so many girls were so interested in this book back then. This book was probably the very first “chick book” that I ever read. It was the first book that had stories in it that I would suspect my mother would not have approved of me reading. Yet, because this book was about four children, we all got away with it quite easily! This book now that I think about it, was more “racy” than Peyton Place! The taboo subjects in this book are so numerous. Incestuous relationships were all over this book. Rape, murder, suicide. You name it this book and the book series had it all. I remember that I even had the posters that we could order from the back page hanging in my bedroom. These were really scary posters too. Yet, I did not think they were scary then. I thought they were awesome!
I want to relate the phenomenon that this book caused with girls my age to the preteen girls that began the Salem Witch Trials. The witch trials in Salem began with young girls having racy, scary thoughts and ideas. This book appealed to the genre of girls that also had those same kinds of thoughts and ideas, I suspect that nearly all girls go through this phase. Flowers in the Attic fed right into it and it will forever be a book I will remember. Today when I go to the book store to find books for my own daughter, we find many books that have a lot of similarities with “Flowers in the Attic”.
I do not think the book did me any harm. I suspect in fact that it did me a lot of good. It helped to lessen my own naivety about the world I lived in. I suspect a lot of girls learned a lot from that book!
As I was in my own puberty, I remember having my own feelings about puberty validated as I read about Chris and Cathy and their changing bodies. I was horror stuck at their own behavior with each other, but it was captivating to read and I could not put the book down. I was able to feel the emotions that these children felt. Perhaps not to the degree that these children felt them, but as they felt sorrow and anger and pain I felt it right along with them.
I recommend this book to teenagers. It is a good wake up to the world of kids that are neglected and unloved. It is a way to teach us to look outside of the safe families that some of us live in and realize how things can change.
Thank you for reading!
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