Ah, young love.

[slemslempike]

What better way for the Guardian children's book section to celebrate valentine's day than with a review of Flowers in the Attic?

"When I read the book I experienced many different emotions: at times I was laughing, conversely at other times I was angered or sad."

"I guess one negative aspect of the book is that the plot seems to be quite unrealistic"

"it is an excellent book for many people: romance-lovers [...]"

I do wish I'd read Flowers in the Attic when I was a teenager, I feel I would have appreciated it much more than as an adult.

Comments

Ah, indeed!

[jinty]

Wonder who thought that was a good idea. Mind you, I think it's not until the next one that the brother & sister start actually having their own kids etc, IIRC.

I've not read FITA as an adult - presumably there's no way you could take it seriously?

Re: Ah, indeed!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

No - I did know about the ridiculousness of it before I embarked on reading it! It's actually why I bothered at all.

I quite like that they've apparently decided to just publish what the child reviewers want to write. And it's nice that they got a range of emotions from reading it - mine were only hilarity and horror.

Re: Ah, indeed!

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

They don't have their own kids, she marries a ballet dancer and then goes after her mother's husband as payback. I think they sort of adopt a girl together though.

Re: Ah, indeed!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It's nice to have an expert around to keep us straight!

Re: Ah, indeed!

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

I was obsessed with them. OBSESSED!

Re: Ah, indeed!

[jinty]

Blimey, I've obviously forgotten more about them than I ever realized!

[wonderlanded.livejournal.com]

And I think it's not until the last book, the prequel, that you find out that the children's parents weren't actually cousins or whatever but actually half-brother and -sister.

I love to think that there was someone at the Graun going through a pile of reviews thinking 'now, what shall we publish for Valentine's Day? Oh, here we go...'

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

Flowers in the Attic was one of the books that was passed around my class when I was in the second year/year 8. I reread them several times (and was quite horrified when I discovered my Nan had read them). I remember the emotions and the anguish of the books - glorious at thirteen! I was completely absorbed when I read them, but was also slightly ashamed - I knew my Mum wouldn't approve! I do remember thinking Chris got creepier and creepier as the series progressed.

Have you seen the truely dreadful film?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I have not - but I think I might like to! I haven't actually read any of the sequels either, feeling that I probably got the gist of it from the first.

I remember the emotions and the anguish of the books - glorious at thirteen!

This is what I wish I'd had!

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the first half of the second - they had escaped and were starting to get their lives together, but then it all keeps going horribly wrong and they end up in an obsessive spiral (lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of the books)...

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

I also read FITA when I was in my very early teens. My main recollection of my reaction was a rather distressing puzzlement about how I was supposed to react. I think I found them really very creepy but had the impression I was supposed to be moved by them. (I reacted in a similar way to Wuthering Heights, which I read a couple of years later.)

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I read Wuthering Heights about five years ago and I found it thoroughly frustrating. I didn't find a single character even vaguely appealing, and I remember finishing with a real sense of relief that it was over. At the time I wondered whether I would have loved it as a teenager, but I think even then I would have wanted them to pull themselves together and stop being such moody drips...

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

I read it when I was 10, and it was like, the best thing I had ever read ever. And the last book in the series devastated me. I don't think I could reread now.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

What happens in the last book?

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

Chris gets knocked down by a car and killed (I believe in pretty much the same way as their father was - stopping to help someone involved in a car accident and hit crossing the road). I remember being in my room and rushing down the stairs sobbing and trying to explain to my mum what was happening. And then Cathy goes up into the attic of the rebuilt Foxworth (?) Hall and creates another paper garden and dies there of a broken heart.

I did mean I don't think I could reread now as it wouldn't be the same, as I'm sure they're terrible, rather than I'm too traumatised to revisit. In case it came across that way. :)

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh, that does sound very sad!

[notmarcie.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I remember those books, they were addictively terrible. I also read the Heaven series and another one about a girl who lives in a mansion and there is a dollshouse or something. Essentially they all have the same plot but different names.

I did cry when the mouse died. The children not so much. I found the tarred hair scene frightening though.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I don't think I remember the tarred hair incident.

[notmarcie.livejournal.com]

After Grandmother catches Chris looking at naked Cathy she tells him to cut her hair off or they will starve. He refuses. Grandmother then drugs cathy in her sleep, covers all her hair with tar and leaves the scissors. Chris cuts the hair off. And then she starves them anyway which is when they eat two mice and drink Chris' blood.

It really was all very dramatic!

[leedy.livejournal.com]

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I remember even as a teenager finding it kind of ridiculous...

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Don't eat the doughnuts...

[anglaisepaon.livejournal.com]

My friend Shannon had all the V.C. Andrews books and we passed them around for weeks until our parents found out. They were wildly addictive and really very terrible. It was another series, about a girl with a doll that looked just like her, that I remembered most. She had a father who was obsessed with her dead mother and so was her step-father, who was trying to seduce her. It was all very intriguing to a 12 year old. Can't imagine reading them as an adult, though - I'd probably laugh my way through.

[notmarcie.livejournal.com]

This was the Heaven series. The girl was called Heaven. It was all as equally ludicrous as Flowers...but with an added trashy adoptive mother.

[starfishchick]

I kind of feel like we should do a read-along of at least one, just for fun.

[starfishchick]

Belatedly, I read all of these books and was also obsessed with them for a time in my teens. They really are hilarious and horrifying in retrospect. :)