Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger #1)

I saw the movie adaptation when I was growing up, and I was always curious, but as a kid, I wasn\’t much of a reader. I stumbled across this, though, and I had heard a lot about it from others who apparently were all about this author when they were kids. It takes a bit to get used to the style, especially the way the characters talk. But it makes sense, I suppose for the older era. Kathy is not likable. Not one moment in the beginning, middle, or end did I like her, but I was too intrigued by the story to stop reading. I knew from the movie that I guess was made in the 80s or 90s hinted at an incestuous relationship between Kathy and Christopher, but I didn\’t think it went this far. It makes sense as to why they are this way, but it had my stomach turning, especially when . . . Christopher rapes Kathy. I don\’t blame the film for cutting that but it took me by surprise. As someone who has been sexually abused by close family, it really hit home, and I didn\’t know what to do with myself. I think my subconscious knew from the film what really happened, and that\’s why I avoided reading this for so long. Still, it\’s a twisted tale for those who like things really dark and can stomach incest. I had every urge to read the next books until I read the reviews. I needed a warning because it\’s just too triggering to walk into, and the following books don\’t paint a picture I want to read about any of them. So, I\’ll still give this book 4 stars. It lives up to its name as something twisted, and besides the difference in era, it\’s able to capture your attention. But I won\’t read more books in this series, or by this author. I read she died and the family used ghostwriters. So I don\’t know what was the author and what is someone pretending to be the author.

The tragic death of her husband leaves Corinne penniless, unable to support her four children. At the tender age of eighteen, she was disowned by her wealthy parents for her sins, but a desperate letter to her mother, begging to be allowed to return to her childhood home, sees the five of them travelling to the sprawling estate Foxworth Hall in rural Virginia. Corinne tells her children, Chris (14), Cathy (12), Cory and Carrie (5), that she needs a day or two to prepare her father to meet them. She informs them their Grandfather is dying, and that once she wins back his affections, she will inherit everything and they will be rich. But in the interim they must remain quiet and hidden, locked in a back bedroom on the second floor their Grandmother has prepared for them, with access to the attic via a staircase in the closet, to use as a playroom. But a day turns into a week, then a month, and then years pass. Chris, Cathy, Cory, and Carrie have long ago stopped caring about the Grandfather and the money. All they want it their freedom. First published in 1979, set in the late 1950s, Flowers in the Attic, and it\’s three sequels, Petals on the Wind (1980), If There Be Thorns (1981), Seeds of Yesterday (1984), and the prequel, Garden of Shadows (1986) have been favourites of mine for over thirty years. Part horror, family saga and drama, forbidden romance, coming of age and gothic tale, Flowers in the Attic is the troubling story of love, loss, abuse, secrets, lies, and betrayal. Cathy is the sole first-person narrator, and we experience every injustice and shocking revelation as she, along with her brothers and sister, do. As a pre-teen I found Cathys thoughts, hopes and dreams, teen angst, body image issues, and mood swings to be very relatable, and as an adult reader my heart ached for her and her siblings and their suffering, and I admired Cathy\’s strength of character, and her caring nature. Chris, Cory, and Carrie were just as compelling, all with their own unique personality traits, and I loved them all. The Grandmother and Corinne\’s behaviour and actions, particularly the latters selfishness and motivations, held a particular horrified fascination on this read through. How could any mother cast her children aside like this one did? A prominent theme is the end of innocence. The consequences of being isolated and shut away drastically affect the children\’s physical, mental, emotional, and social development, as well as alter the course of their lives. Cathy and Chris are forced to grow up fast, taking on adult roles of surrogate parents and teachers to their younger siblings sacrificing their own childhood to care for them. They do everything in their power to minimise the twins suffering, keeping them busy and entertained, making their tiny living space as comforting and homely as possible, and protect them from the worst of the horrors that surround them. For Chris and Cathy, teenagers on the cusp of manhood and womanhood, experiencing puberty in close quarters, acting the part of mother and father, causes them to become dangerously close, and develop sexual feelings for one another. The combination of the dark shadow of their recently learned family history hanging over them, and their fanatically religious Grandmother constantly reminding them that they are wicked, spawned from the Devil, evil from the moment of conception, and that it\’s only a matter of time until they succumb to their sinful lust contributes to this. Bored, starved of love, education, peer-to-peer contact, and adolescent milestones, it made sense that they become drawn to one another in an inappropriate way. It did contain a certain amount of the ick factor, but to be honest I think it helped that I don\’t have any brothers, and my overwhelming emotion back then, and now, were sadness for both Cathy and Chris. Flowers in the Attic had elements of dark fairy tale. Cathy, with her long flowing blonde hair, is reminiscent of Rapunzel or a princess, locked up in a dark tower. The Grandmother is cruel, strict, cold, and severe looking, and controls their behaviour and environment through corporal punishment deprivation, judgement, authority, and humiliation. The mere thought of her strikes fear in the children and she is the embodiment of the hag, the old woman, and the witch of fairytale lore. Their mother is beautiful, helpless, weak-willed, and spoiled, showering them with gifts, but the longer they are kept in the attic the less connected she feels to them. The children possess doll-like features, are collectively called the Dresden dolls, their surname is Dollanganger, and Cathy is a talented ballerina who envisions her future stage name as Catherine Doll. The imposing Foxworth Hall has all the gothic trappings creepy, shadowy, gloomy, depressing, and cut off from civilisation. In my opinion Flowers in the Attic remains a must read. If youve never read it then what are you waiting for? If, like me, you devoured it when you were young, then I\’m telling you now it deserves a re-read. Im undoubtedly bias, because I read it for the first time when I was eleven, and wasn\’t scarred for life, but I still think it is suitable for a YA audience, the POV is a young person after all, and my local library agrees with me, and has it shelved accordingly. I look forward to picking up Petals on the Wind later this year, when the 40th Anniversary edition is released.

I have always heard so much about \’Flowers in the Attic\’ and I never quite understood what the hoopla was all about, that is. . .until I read the book. OMG, this is one of those stories where you don\’t want to believe that something like this could ever occur to four innocent children, but occur it did and with one humongous impact! Brother and sister, Chris and Cathy, started out with the perfect life–A loving father, a doting and caring mother–they never needed or wanted for anything. All was good in the Dollanganger home and then to add to their ever loving family, a set of twins were born, Cory and Carrie. Four lovely children the neighbors penned as the \’Dresden Dolls\’. Their father was a traveling salesman and he made it a point to come home every weekend to spend time with his family. He loved them more than life itself, until a tragic accident changed the lives of the entire family forever! As a result of this tragedy, their mother had no choice but to pack up what was left to her family and head to Virginia where her parents lived. The children had never met their maternal grandparents and knew nothing about her, but what they soon learned would drastically change them physically and mentally for the rest of their lives. Death has a way of opening up the eyes of those who are left to grieve. What we once perceive as one way, quickly can turn to something else, which the Dollanganger children unfortunately learned. The abuse they suffered being locked away up in a huge attic with a sadistic grandmother who never knew love which was a tragedy in and of itself. The two eldest children, Chris and Cathy, discovered horrible secrets their only existence soon told and were left dumbfounded by the mother they adored so much, to find out she wasn\’t quite the \’Momma\’ they thought her to be. Talk about having to grow up overnight is an understatement. This story will take you on an emotional roller coaster in which the reader soon wants to disembark. There was plenty of thrills, but not in a fun and loving way. This classic definitely lived up to all the hype and more! Simply outstanding read. I\’ve never read anything more eloquently told. If you haven\’t read this one, you most certainly should add it to your reading list. Now that I\’ve read the book, I must see if the movie lives up to what my mind\’s eye helped me to view? Hmm, probably not!

I\’ve given this book a five star rating not based on its amazing literary merit, characterization, symbolic referencing or the fact that it is beautifully written, but on the basis that it is 5 star page turning trash. It was recommended to me by someone of whom I should have known better than to be likely to read something of true quality, and within the first few pages I knew that I had been recommended a pile of gratuitous, vacuous airheaded nonsense. However I\’m am rather enjoying this light read for its implausible tale of cruelty, greed, and despair, so I\’m putting aside my notions of book snobbery and dumbing down because I want to see how the story unfolds. In simplistic terms if I was to compare this book to a magazine it would be \’Take a Break\’……………………….go on you know you want to #guiltypleasures

Still probably the most popular novel put out under the name V C Andrews I can still remember everyone seemingly reading it whilst growing up, indeed I know in my immediate family we all read it. Until now that was the only time I had read this, but I decided to go through it again and see if it was still any good. A gothic tale with incest and other tropes of the genre so this does still make for a good enough read, but of course as there are a number of clichs here this is a bit cheesy. Even at the beginning with a car accident that a policeman recounts to the grieving family, you cannot help but start to laugh, as it is not enough that the driver is killed when hit head-on, but the car has to roll over a number of times and catch light. There are also a number of holes in the tale where the older children know things that they should not, such as where various places are in the strange house they are trapped in, and other incidents. This is a tale that the narrator, Cathy, who was only twelve when this first started, is looking back upon, and of course is the first in a series. Ultimately a tale of skeletons in the family closet, betrayal, greed, forbidden love and selfishness, along with compassion and coming of age, there is a lot of things that go on here, and you just better watch out for a certain foodstuff. As the four children are smuggled into their grandparents house, which they have never been to before, so they are kept hidden in a wing, confined to a room and the attic. Due to the actions of the mother and her half-uncle so the mum has been written out of the family will and disowned, but as she tells her children, she is set upon appeasing her father, regaining a place in the will, and thus making them all wealthy. But what should be only a couple of days, and then a week starts to turn into years, so what is really happening? Considered controversial by some on first publication, of course, as seems the norm in the US it was banned in schools and libraries in some areas originally, which of course only fuelled publicity and meant more people bought and read this book than otherwise, meaning that the publishers were in desperate need of a sequel. As with other books by this author and now Andrew Neiderman who took over the mantle when Cleo Virginia Andrews died, so this is aimed more at the young adult market, and probably biased slightly more towards the girls than boys. More so because it does incorporate certain elements from fairy-tales.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member