Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews

Forbidden Snowflake said:

Anyone read it? What are your thoughts on this bestseller?

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I read it in high school, which is probably the best place to read her books. (Teen says, "Look, there are people in this book more miserable than me. Cool!") Also, when you're a teen, you're growing into your own sexuality, and your body and brain are warring with each other over sexual impulses. At that stage, sex is forbidden (unless you're in a verrrry lax household), but you want it. What better book to read than one about a brother and sister who are told they're evil because they are attracted to each other (and IIRC they aren't at first), are forced to live together in an attic, and eventually have sex?! It's like a metaphor for learning to live with conflicting sexual impulses.

It seems all the other girls were reading it, even the girls who didn't read much. I remember the girls I saw with in art class asking their friends "Did you read Flowers in the Attic?!" These are the same girls who thought I was weird for reading Andre Norton's Quag Keep (well that version did have a remarkably ugly cover) and asked "Why do you always read that science fiction mystery stuff." I mean, they had no clue what it was, didn't even know what it was called, and couldn't even tell two different genres apart, and yet they had no problem with reading Flowers in the Attic.


I read a number of the original V. C. Andrews books. I don't think I'd have the patience to read that many of them today -- especially as the originals were very long. Interestingly, I once read that V. C. Andrews turned in manuscripts that were about 1,000 pages long (maybe more) to her editor, and the editor would dutifully trim them. I think even the first manuscript was that long, but there must have been something there that kept the editor reading. Anyway, the fact that they were originally that long might account for the "jumpy" quality some critics have complained about in her books.

I wish I still had a copy of that article because it was really fascinating. (This might be the People magazine article that the bio says she was disappointed with.) This might also be where I read that V. C. Andrews suffered from spinal cord problems for most her life, so she had to type standing up -- very difficult, as you can imagine! (I think Hemingway typed standing up because of back problems.)

By the way, I read most of the sequels to "Flowers in the Attic" but eventually gave up. I never managed to read any of her other series -- they just didn't draw me in. And eventually I just gave up on her. Reading My Sweet Audrina didn't help.

Sonarbabe said:

I'm a fan of V.C. Andrews and have been for quite some time. Though Flowers in the Attic is indeed a very disturbing book (the whole series involving those particular characters were disturbing actually), I thought it was good. Maybe it's just me. While V.C. Andrews, herself, died many years ago, her family members continue writing under her name.

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The writer himself is actually Andrew Neiderman (who also writes under his own name), but I guess he was hired through the family. I've heard conflicting reports about this. Originally they said he was simply hired to finish books V. C. Andrews had started. Later they said he was going to work from the many outlines she had left behind.

Sonarbabe said:

The later works--though not quite as dark--are very good. Sort of like fine wine. They get better with time.

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I haven't read any of the Neiderman books -- I guess what I think of as the "V. C. Andrews (TM) books as they made her name into a trademark. (Even before Harlan Ellison thought of it. ) I did, however, read one of his horror stories, from before he started ghostwriting for V. C. Andrews -- Brainchild. Creepy but over-the-top. Didja see that Simpsons episode where Lisa got so angry at Bart that she started experimenting on him for a school project? Imagine a serious, horrific version of that plot, only with less sympathetic characterizations than the cartoon.

Since then, I haven't read any of Neiderman's books. I considered one recently when I was looking for thrillers, but then I read the excerpt. And I decided it wasn't my thing. Still, I have to admire him for imagination and prolific writing. (Prolific writers never get any respect.)

But what's weird about this thread is that I have a sudden urge reread Flowers in the Attic to see if I'd like it. Or even to try reading the Casteel series again. Help!

I have to admit... I read ALL of the Flowers in the attic books again in the late 90's. The only other books I've ever read twice are: Interview with the vampire by Anne Rice and 'The holy blood and the holy grail' by Michael Baigent & Henry Lincoln, so the FITA books must have been a little interesting to me lol.

AnneMarble said:

But what's weird about this thread is that I have a sudden urge reread Flowers in the Attic to see if I'd like it.

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I can't understand why people complain about the dark subject matter.

Incest happens. In real life. Get over it. Not every family is happy.

I was more disturbed by the rank writing. I mean...*puke*.

I've only seen the movie. God, I hate that movie. Near about the silliest ending I've ever seen. It doesn't make any sense!

beezle said:

I've only seen the movie. God, I hate that movie. Near about the silliest ending I've ever seen. It doesn't make any sense!

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I think I saw it, but I really can't remember. It was probably one of those cases where 1) they tried to create a 93-minute-long movie out of a long book and 2) they cut out the most controversial parts -- like the incest! I mean, what's a V. C. Andrews plot without the incest?! Then they probably wondered why it flopped. Oh, and apparently they really screwed up the ending. Sometimes moviemakers think they know how to plot more than novelists. Sometimes they're right. (Pick most adaptations of The Scarlet Pimpernel as examples; I love the book, but the movies do a better job with the actual plot.) But often, they dead wrong. This was one of those "dead wrong" cases.

Edited to add:
Oh, I found that article I read all those years ago! It was right there on the V. C. Andrews website:
http://www.completevca.com/art_recluse.shtml

This was the People magazine article that upset her enough that she stopped giving interviews because she thought her words had been distorted. She did finally do one for the book Faces of Fear, and now I'm curious about how that interview compares. Oh, wait, they have that one, too. Her comments about the People interview are interesting.

Well, if I ever fall over the fifth book, I may try it, Elodie Caroline. But if it turns out to be one of those: I had it beaten/burned/drilled into me, so had to play a macabre game of 'tag' by passing on the vile-bile, I'll be really cross!

I just hate people who never learn to empathise (or learn the difference between right and wrong!)

Oooh, hark at me.

I love, love, love VC Andrews books. I own about 40 of them, but they've been in a box for a while now as many of my books have.
The only problem lately is they keep repeating the same kind of story lines, so I don't read the new ones. I read the old ones over and over again.
VC Andrews died after the first few books or so, and they've had different writers following her style/theme and keeping the books under her name.

I read all of the VC Andrews I could get a hold of in junior high and high school. I can't remember why I started, but I became obsessed when I found out our neighbor across the street had grown up with VC. I don't remember what the writing was like, but I was attracted to the dark stories (bad childhood myself, no incest though!) and since I hoped to be a writer someday I loved the 6 degrees of seperation (or maybe 2) between myself and VC. In fact, back then, I tended to (poorly) write over-the-top Jackie Collins-esqe family sagas. So glad I got out of that phase!!

lol @ DollyWagon... yeah, hark at you!

With the 5th book, it tells how the grandmother was disappointed in her loveless and passionless marriage, a kind of Madame Bovary story. It also tells how she used to spy on her brother-in-law and his young wife; they were totally opposites to the grandmother and her husband, and you find out all about the swan-bed in that one too.

Like someone else said on here, they had an unhappy childhood (with no incest) same goes for me too... So I guess 'bad-people' stories don't bug our minds as much as with people who had fantastic childhoods; we sort of know where they're coming from. I must hasten to add though, whilst I'm hard-headed with a lot of things in this life, I didn't turn out a horrid person from it!

Dollywagon said:

Well, if I ever fall over the fifth book, I may try it, Elodie Caroline. But if it turns out to be one of those: I had it beaten/burned/drilled into me, so had to play a macabre game of 'tag' by passing on the vile-bile, I'll be really cross!

I just hate people who never learn to empathise (or learn the difference between right and wrong!)

Oooh, hark at me.

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P.S. The film of Flowers in the attic was total crap; you cannot fit 4 or 5 books in to an hour and a half film.

Ellie

Ooh, maybe we have found the common denominator, bad childhood = not bothered by the incest bit (or maybe not, for those of you who disagree!)

I've got to be honest here, I liked the mother a lot less than the grandmother, and basically from the start of the book. She came across as a shallow, gutless, self-serving mare. Nobody in their right mind would have taken their children to that place unless there was something in it for themselves.

Why she just couldn't have got a job in a shop I'll never know!

It would have made it a pretty short book though, I must admit.

Well, to me, the first incest in the book was by two consenting adults, the second lot, Cathy and Chris, she could have told the Police if she was that bothered by it or could have walked out on him once they were free; it's not like it was grown-ups who were sexually abusing thier own children... So as far as the incest bits in these books are concenerd; there's a lot worse going on in this world, like the aforementioned... adults sexually abusing and abusing children full stop.

Yep, the mother only cared about inheriting the money; money meant more to her than her own children.

Ellie

You people are eeevil. Thanks to this thread, I ended up looking for V. C. Andrews in the bookstore, for the first time in 15 years or so. And I bought a couple of the books -- Flowers in the Attic for a reread and Garden of Shadows because I realized I'd never read the prequel, and a book starting another series. I was very annoyed to learn that the prequel and the other series book were written by Andrew Neiderman (although Garden maybe have been started by V. C. Andrews). I was going to return the ghostwritten books as I just want real V. C. Andrews. But then I started Garden and had to find out what happened.

I have decided that some of the V. C. Andrews fans are a little nuts. I looked up recent reviews on Flowers in the Attic, curious what a new generation of readers had to say about it. The first review visible right now calls it "One of the greatest trashy novels ever written" and compares the book to "a big bag of potato chips." I think the review is spot-on about why so many people love V. C. Andrews books even as they feel guilty about them. And you'd think that would be OK. But nooo, there's a comment to this review calling the reviewer a wannabe intellectual snob, and even criticizing the potato chips metaphor. (Wha!?) And this is criticism of a person who admitted to liking the book despite its flaws. Sheesh. I guess this person has never read many reviews.

And some of the posts on the V. C. Andrews message board I visited briefly this weekend... OK, whatever floats your boat, but...

Jadezuki said:

Hmmm. Well.


I read Flowers in the Attic when I was... I must have been nine years old, or a bit younger. My older sisters had read it, and my mother denounced it as trash. This was the first book I was forbidden to read, so I was fascinated, and snuck it away to read it on the sly.

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For me, it was "Sybil." My mother had read the book, so I wasn't allowed to get near it until I was 14 or 15. I dutifully waited -- after all, I had probably read everything from William Goldman's Magic to Executioner novels to Rosemary Rogers, Kathleen Woodiwiss, and Flowers in the Attic by then. (What my mother didn't know... )

I think more schools should use this technique to get kids to read. "Don't you dare read that Shakespeare!"

Jadezuki said:

After reading that, I read Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, My Sweet Audrina, and Dawn, all within about a year (my sisters, who are all at least eight years older than I am, had bought them). I was fascinated at the time, but today the books are, well, trash. I'm not surprised they're so popular with the young adult set, because I don't know of any adults who actually like them. They seem to be some dark rite of passage for kids... we've all read them once, but meh.

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Yup, it is a rite of passage. Before V. C. Andrews, kids had a harder time finding dark, creepy books that spoke to their inner turmoil.

I'm the kind of reader who likes to read weird trashy things once in a while. Like an old men's adventure novel or even Go Ask Alice. (I liked the men's adventure novels better than Go Ask Alice. At least they admitted to being made up. ) It can be fun ripping through, say, an angsty problem novel -- besides, you come across some really good ones.

Jadezuki said:

Oddly enough, I was more disturbed by My Sweet Audrina.

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I was too annoyed by the plot and characters to be disturbed by it. I don't want to reveal spoilers, but... Didn't the main character notice the difference in ages between herself and her sister?! If you've read it, you know what I mean. (Unless I'm remembering the plot wrong. But one problem with this novel is that because of my annoyance, I still remember that bloody twist!)

AnneMarble said:

I'm the kind of reader who likes to read weird trashy things once in a while. Like an old men's adventure novel or even Go Ask Alice. (I liked the men's adventure novels better than Go Ask Alice. At least they admitted to being made up. ) It can be fun ripping through, say, an angsty problem novel -- besides, you come across some really good ones.

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Me too! Sometimes I love to read a good trashy book, it's one of my life's guilty pleasures. It's like watching a movie on the sci-fi channel, or eating a hot dog at a sporting event. You know it's terrible, but for some reason you can't get enough. That's probably why I'm an Anne Rice fan.

The movie did really suck. It would be so cool if they did a good version of one of the series of books. They'd have to be done in more than one movie though, there is way too much story to cram it even into 1.5 hours.

See! See! This is exactly what I was talking about in the "Georgia Mom Wants Harry Potter banned" thread. You forbid a kid a thing, the kid goes and does it!

I was also expressly forbidden V. C. Andrews when I was in the pre-teen years. And Christopher Pike. Of the two, I only managed to sneak copies of Pike, and as I recall, those were vaguely good. Couldn't see why Mom had said no to them; maybe she was afraid I'd be scared? I really liked the one that had a ghost having to solve her own murder, and the one with the witch who had to prevent a friend's murder. They were all murder mysteries, right? What about the one with the real bullets in the stage gun--was that a Pike novel too?

I had friends who had the movie version of Flowers in the Attic and loved to watch it, so I watched it with them without telling Mom. Since in the movie the incest is all off-stage (the adults) and falsely accused (the kids), I didn't see what was up with forbidding V.C. Andrews either. And I remember noticing that the grandfather's will had the same date as my birthday, which made me connect with it.

Now I want to go back and read the actual books just to find out exactly how bad they are. Someone stop me!

Elodie-Caroline said:

Well, to me, the first incest in the book was by two consenting adults, the second lot, Cathy and Chris, she could have told the Police if she was that bothered by it or could have walked out on him once they were free

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That's exactly why I thought it was silly. He raped her, and she didn't mind at all, and it seemed that it was done that way just to make it more dramatic. That scene came across as a rape fantasy and not a realistic situation. The incest itself didn't bother me. Just the way it was protrayed. I could see how a brother and sister who were going through puberty and trapped in an attic without any contact from kids their own age could become attracted to each other. But I have no tolerance for that I'm-so-repressed-that-I-say-no-but-mean-yes crap.

Elodie-Caroline said:

Besides that doctor bloke in the second book, the only man Cathy was with through the other books, was her own brother Chris.

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Cathy also seduced her mother's husband to get revenge on her in the second book.

As for the rumor that VC Andrews never existed, I think that is partly due to the fact that most of "her" books are written by Andrew Neiderman, and partly due to her being a recluse. She probably did not meet many people, at least as not as many as most famous authors do. And very little is known about her life. Even in interviews, she did not talk much about her past. There are not many people left behind who knew her.

Like Anne, I have never heard a definitive explanation for where the books came from after her death. I believe Niederman will not say which books he wrote, and which she had completed before she died. I think the family wanted to keep it a bit mysterious. He will not say if he wrote Garden of Shadows, but I always believed he had, because quite frankly, the writing is much better than anything else in the Dollanganger series. He claims that there were no unfinished manuscripts, only outlines. I also heard that she had the outlines for more than 60 "stories" when she died. I would interpret a "story" to be an entire series, not a book. The Dollanganger saga would be one story, the Casteel saga another, etc. I've always believed this, since VC Andrews died of breast cancer, and knew she would not complete many more books.

What I wanna know is...why do people still think FITA is based on a true story????

Ah, sorry; I forgot about that bit...

Celia Cyanide said:

Cathy also seduced her mother's husband to get revenge on her in the second book.

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Dollywagon said:

Ooh, maybe we have found the common denominator, bad childhood = not bothered by the incest bit (or maybe not, for those of you who disagree!)

snip!

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You may have something here. In my experience, the happier one's childhood is the more one expects the world to make sense and play nicely. I found out early that it doesn't, but who cares? Nobody can insult or scandalize me without my permission & I rarely give it.

I loved the VC Andrews books, they weren't like the sterilized crap that passed for YA back then. (Yes, I know they're not YA, but they may as well have been because every girl I knew in high school read all the FITA books.) I love fiction that pushes boundries and challenges my ideas of what's right and what's wrong. I still remember how cool it was to find John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire; that deals with incest & yet isn't bashed as trash (as far as I know). If a certain type of writing offends someone, they don't have to read it. Unfortunately, that may limit my potential audience, but who knows -- maybe teenagers will be forbidden to read my novels someday! That would be cool!

Celia Cyanide said:

What I wanna know is...why do people still think FITA is based on a true story????

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My guess, is because they want to.

I can't confirm this because I've just donated the book to my local fete, but doesn't it say in the intro that it is based on a true story?

Lots of films are based on true stries too... but very loosely and nowhere near the truth most of the time

Ellie

Dollywagon said:

I can't confirm this because I've just donated the book to my local fete, but doesn't it say in the intro that it is based on a true story?

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There is a prologue that implies that Cathy is writing this to tell their story. But unless you have read very few books, I don't understand why you would take such a prologue literally.

Oi, I've read quite a lot of books actually.

I couldn't remember whether it was a prologue or the writers intro, my point was that it may be the reason people think it is based on a true story?