While perusing the Interwebs one day, I stumbled upon a list of books categorized by arbitrary levels of disturbing-ness. I was surprised to find this was a fan favorite. I remember V.C. Andrews having a big following in my high school, but I think I read maybe one of her books and I don't even remember the title. I had never even heard of Flowers in the Attic. Since I like to keep tabs on popular books so I'm not (too far) out of the loop, I downloaded this onto my Kindle Fire.
Flowers in the Attic starts with a typical suburban family; loving parents and four beautiful children the neighbors call Dresden Dolls. Their parents doted on their children and each other. Christopher and Cathy are the two oldest, followed by a long gap by twins Cody and Carrie. The Dollangangers reside in Pennsylvania, three females, three males, a hardworking father and seemingly devoted mother. Tragically, their father dies in a car accident on his birthday, leaving behind a devastated family with no means to pay the bills. Out of options, the remaining 5 Dollangangers head to their grandparent's estate in Virginia. The one caveat is that the four children must remain locked away in the attic while Mrs. Dollanganger returns to the good graces of her father and becomes the sole benefactress of his will.
The short stay in the attic turns very lengthy. The children are brought food each day by their very stern grandmother who establishes an odd set of very strict rules. Eventually, the children learn that their parents were actually related and her father disinherited her after the Dollangangers were married. Her father is unaware that four children were born from that union, much less that they are living in the attic.
3 years go by. Their mother becomes a stranger to them, eventually seldom coming to visit them, and finally remarries a man who is also living in the house and has no idea she has four kids living above them. Her father eventually dies, but she never rescues the children, and continues to mislead her children. Meanwhile, upstairs Cathy and Christopher begin an incestuous brother/sister relationship and one of the twins dies. Finally, finally, finally, they hatch a rescue plan and leave the estate.
I know this book was written for the young adult genre, but it had a lot of frustrating flaws.
1. The house they are living in seems so large it cannot be real unless it is some of kind of palace.
2. There's nothing really to indicate the mother would turn so drastically on her children.
3. Despite being locked up with each other for a long period of time, even as teenagers, I really doubt that two siblings would begin an incestuous relationship even with blossoming hormones.
4. Cathy and Christopher are really smart, disciplined people and it took them 3 years to finally realize their mother didn't care about them and they finally escaped? Leaving didn't necessarily mean they wouldn't see their mother again anyway.
The book was dark and disturbing, but also boring in parts. Being locked up in the attic is only so interesting. The most disturbing part of the book for me wasn't even the incest, it was the incident in which the grandmother thought Cathy was being a slut by flashing around her hair and tarred in her hair in her sleep after drugging her. That is a sadistic grandmother.
