Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger)

The four Dollanganger children had such perfect lives -- a beautiful mother, a doting father, a lovely home. Then Daddy was killed in a car accident, and Momma could no longer support the family. So she began writing letters to her parents, her millionaire parents, whom the children had never heard of before.

Momma tells the children all about their rich grandparents, and how Chris and Cathy and the twins will live like princes and princesses in their grandparents' fancy mansion. The children are only too delighted by the prospect. But there are a few things that Momma hasn't told them.

She hasn't told them that their grandmother considers them "devil's spawn" who should never have been born. She hasn't told them that she has to hide them from their grandfather if she wants to inherit his fortune. She hasn't told them that they are to be locked away in an abandoned wing of the house with only the dark, airless attic to play in. But, Momma promises, it's only for a few days....

Then the days stretch into months, and the months into years. Desperately isolated, terrified of their grandmother, and increasingly convinced that their mother no longer cares about them, Chris and Cathy become all things to the twins and to each other. They cling to their love as their only hope, their only strength -- a love that is almost stronger than death.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Flowers in the Attic, 2009-01-06
I purchased this book as a gift for a friend who is a collector of V.C. Andrews books. She was thrilled to receive it so quickly and in excellent condition. Thank you for your promptness.



0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Flowers in the Attic, 2008-12-20
Can you imagine we live like the kids went through.. Oh it is hard to put the book down! It was so excellent book! Thanks.


5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

It all begins with this book..., 2008-09-30
Sadly, this wasn't the first VCA book I ever read, but when I got around to this, I was not disappointed. It is easily one of the best books I have ever read. The drama, the intrigue, the suspense... I have read this book several times and never get tired of it.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

A grim, but compelling, story, 2008-08-26
Flowers in the Attic is the story of four siblings locked up in an attic room by their selfish mother after the death of their father. They must remain a secret from their grandfather who never forgave their parents for marrying each other. It's the only way he will consider ever rewriting his daughter back into his will. Over the years, they are neglected, abused and starved by their bigoted grandmother. It's a story about love and hate. It's a story about greed, lust and betrayal. And it's a story, primarily, about survival. It is popular with young girls, but it is very mature, so be warned about that. The way sexuality is handled will be offensive to many.

I really think that V.C. Andrews came up with some brilliant stories. I think she was attuned to a deeper part of the human psyche that allowed her to write about the darker aspects of life, and in ways that, like an onion, you could keep pulling back layers, picking up on things you never really noticed before. Her stories often get dismissed as trash, at worst, and even many who like her regard her stories as trivial guilty pleasures. I think that if you go into them with that frame of mind, you will only get out of them what you put in. But trust me, there's more there. That is my opinion, of course. I find myself picking up on nuances ten years later that I never could have appreciated as a teen (maybe not even as recent as a year ago). I'm not trying to encourage anyone to become obsessed or anything. Certainly there are better ways to spend your time than trying to analyze a book such as this. There are better books out there to read. But I have to give credit where I honestly feel credit is due.
That being said, she was, technically, a very flawed writer. Her prose is so purple you fear for its life. The characters---while a little more complex than mere cut out dolls---are described in near perfect terms as far as beauty goes. They're all gorgeous specimens of male and female perfection. Then there's V.C. Andrews' approach to sexuality which is, at times intriguing, but more often than not, completely juvenile. I kid you not, there's a passage in the book that actually goes like this: "There was something about a man's strong, well-shaped thighs that excited me (263)." And that's not even the worst of it. She uses words like "maleness" and "male part" combined with adjectives such as "rigid" and "swollen" and "swell". She probably could have benefited from Elizabeth Benedict's book "The Joys of Writing Sex," had that book been released at the time she was writing all these poorly written sex scenes. And trust me, the sex scenes only get worse as the series goes on.
As for the rest of the writing, it is not very good. The characters repeatedly say stuff that make me cringe in horror. It's just such appallingly bad dialogue. They do stuff, at times, that I find extraordinarily unrealistic. It almost seems as if she forced stuff in there to make the book seem more shocking (and trust me, she didn't need to make it shocking, the concept alone already is!) Not to say that it's all badly written. I did find parts of it amusing in a good way. And there were parts of it that were written in a way that I found emotionally affecting.
She's a very gifted storyteller, but no matter how strong your story is, it can't compensate for poor writing. I hear she wrote this novel really fast. Maybe if she'd taken more time with it, she could have done a lot of much needed editing. Maybe it would have been better. Maybe not. I don't know.
I will say, though, that this is an enjoyable read if you go into it expecting nothing more than a shocking, heartbreaking, compelling story about the tragedy of child abuse in all of its horror. The humanity is there, buried deep, if you look for it beneath all the frills of silly, childish language. The story is certainly relevant. Child abuse like this does happen. Just look at the fairly recent incest case in Austria where the father turned his daughter into his sex slave. This story can't even compete with that in terms of sheer horror.

Also, I think it's pretty amazing that this book has been reviewed so many times when it's about 30 years old. And a majority of them are five star reviews.

One more thing.


SPOILERS IF YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING THE BOOK


This book is notorious for the incest, but I will say this---the incest is not the most sickening part of the story. I think it may well be the most troublesome aspect of the book because it's pretty much the only part of the story that is not conveyed in comfortable black and white terms. There's no mistaking that incest is wrong, but let's not forget that this story is told from the protagonist's point of view, as she lived it. In this book, at least, we are not asked to judge or to condone, only to listen and make up our own minds. I will say that I believe the story is too much for young readers, though they seem to make up a large portion of its audience. I think it's more appropriate for older teens and up. At the very least, I think a reader needs to have more background knowledge regarding rape, date-rape, marital rape, statutory rape, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, incestuous abuse and its many layers of trauma, Stockholm Syndrome and the victim mentality, etc. before they can handle this series because, if you don't have much knowledge about those things beforehand, it will be easy to misunderstand a lot of what happens to these characters. I don't agree that reading is always a harmless experience. I think that, regardless of age, readers need to be prepared ahead of time for material like this so that they can make their own informed judgments without being swayed by the protagonist who may or may not be reliable. To parents, maybe a good solution would be to read this book with your kids and discuss it with them because, if they really want to read it, they'll find a way to read it anyway.

END SPOILERS



I'd give it 3 to 3 1/2 stars


----This review includes some edits near the end, but it remains mostly the same----



0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Ghastly book, 2008-07-11
This book has no redeeming value whatsoever. But worth reading for a laugh at the pure over-the-top bad camp of it.

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