FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC by V.C. Andrews: A Review

 

Flowers In The Attic was the debut novel of the late V.C. Andrews. It tells the story of the Dollanganger family as told by 12-year-old Cathy. Facing financial destitution, Cathy's mother tries to get back on her ailing father's good graces in an attempt to get a lofty inheritance. Apparently she "shamed" her family by marrying and having children--including Cathy, her older brother and fraternal twins--with her very own cousin. However, in order to do that, she agrees to have their spiteful grandmother-- who's a religious nut-case who looks upon them as if they were spawned from the Devil himself--lock them away in the attic to keep them out of sight of her husband who apparently has no knowledge of his own grandchildren's existence. At first, the children's mother visits them regularly and lavishes them with expensive gifts and keeps assuring them that soon her father will be gone and she'll receive a sizable inheritance and she can take them away so they can live a better life. However, her visits become more and more infrequent until she stops visiting them altogether. When she does start seeing them again, she announces that she got married to her father's attorney, much to her children's surprise and chagrin. It's during this time that Cathy and her older brother Chris become closer and closer, and it's their increasing "closeness" which leads to one of the more disturbing passages in the book (and I believe I'll just let you read that for yourself, all right?). Eventually the children discover that they're slowly being poisoned by their evil abusive grandmother and their own mother and they hatch a plan to escape the attic, which leads to some tragic consequences (and, again, I'll let you read the book to find out what those "consequences" are, OK?). This book, as you can probably already tell, can be rather disturbing at times and is probably not for the easily-offended, especially about religious matters. V.C. Andrews's books, as regular readers of her novels can no doubt attest, follow the same theme, i.e. seriously effed-up families who usually have some serious religious issues. (It kind of makes one wonder if Miss Andrews was writing from "personal" experience, if you know what I mean.) This book was also made into a rather lackluster movie starring Kristy Swanson (who's perhaps best known for starring in the movie version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and the Ashton Kutcher vehicle Dude, Where's My Car?). A sidenote: After the death of V.C. Andrews, her books were so popular that her family decided to hire a ghostwriter to continue writing books under her name supposedly based on her own story ideas and such (as her many legions of fans will probably already know).