Flowers in the Attic

I know most of us must have read like Flowers in the Attics from way before.

I was browsing through the bookshelves, looking for a book to read - I'm always doing this, rereading my books when I've completed the latest books... I spotted my old copy of Flowers in the Attic, with the cover almost torn apart.

I have read it several times, and each time I read it I am once again drawn into the lives and relationships of the characters in this spellbinding story. Each time I feel what they are feeling and see what they are describing as if I am there with them. This book has affected me emotionally more than any other book I have ever read, and I am writing this so that I may share it with you.

Flowers in the Attic is based on a true story, and is written in the first person. This, coupled with a brilliant writing style of Virginia Andrews makes the story seem so very real, even though the plot seems so unlikely.

This powerful, moving and compelling novel is the story of Cathy, Chris, Cory and Carrie, four innocent children with a horrifying story to tell.

The ‘Dresden Dolls’, as they are nicknamed, are beautiful, happy and have a seemingly perfect life. This all changes when their beloved father is killed in a car crash. After, their Mother suddenly announces they cannot pay their debts and must leave immediately to go to her parent’s house. They are wealthy, and many toys and other fine things await her ‘darlings’ there.

Over the three year period they are locked away in just one room, with an attic as their only playroom, they are put in the care of their grandmother. Not only is she strict and heartless, but she has a particular disliking for these devil’s spawn.

Originally, they follow natural instincts to trust their doted-upon Mother who brings them present after present but later they rightfully suspect her intentions are far more sinister and gradually whatever maternal feeling she had for them is also lost in her greed.

The story which unravels is utterly heartbreaking. Unloved and living a restricted and lonely existence, the eldest brother and sister also assume full care and responsibility over their 5 year-old twin brother and sister. They all endure terrible punishments for breaking the grandmother’s puritan rules and on top of this, they are going through puberty. The growing sexual frustration and the high emotion that both of them are going through eventually has cataclysmic consequences.

The story begins in a small town in America where a happy family live seemingly perfect lives. Cathy and her siblings, Chris, Cory and Carrie are waiting with thier mother Corrine for their father to come home from work on the night of his birthday. Cathy, our narrator is 12, Chris is 15 and the twins are just 5 years old. Their Daddy never comes home that night. He has been killed in a car crash.

Corrine admits to her children that they are now in financial trouble and the house and all their belongings will be reposessed. Luckily though Corrine's parents, who have not before been mentioned to the children before, are considerably wealthy and have a large home in West Virginia and the childrens grandmother has agreed to let them stay. However there is one condition. Corrine had disgraced the family several years earlier and she would have to hide the children away from her dying father until she could win him over and he would accept her and her children.

And so at dead of night without saying goodbye to friends and neighbours the five of them leave and take a train to Virginia. They arrive and the children are ushered into a dark room in a dissused wing of the large house while their mother prepares to make a more civilised entrance in the morning.

Cathy is left with Chris and the twins in this one room with adjoining bathroom and the door is always kept locked. Their mother visited the next day to inform them that it may take slightly longer than one day to in back her fathers affection and they may have to stay in that room for a week or so.

The excuses keep coming and the children are kept upstairs waiting for their grandfather to either accept their mother and them or to die so they inherit his fortunes. Meanwhile the grandmother provides the children with a picnic basket of food daily and a list of rules for them to follow forbidding them from looking outside in case they are seen, and even from looking at members of the opposite sex. they must keep thier thoughts pure and their actions modest and remain hidden from the world. They are also given access to a gigantic dusty attic which is to be their only playground.

Later their mother reveals her secret, that her late husband Christopher was in fact her half-uncle, and because of their incest, they were long ago cast out from the family and removed from her father’s will. She intends to win back his trust, but in the meantime insists the children are hidden away in a distant quarter of the magnificent house until she receives her inheritance.

The focus of the book is much less on the storyline than on the feelings and relationships of the characters. The breakdown of the childrens love for their mother as she continualy betrays them is heart breaking. Although we only see things from Cathy's perspective it is clear to the reader that Chris has greater trust and faith in his mother than Cathy and these differences cause tension between the two of them.

Cathy leads on an emotional journey from childhood to womanhod and the reader will most certainly become wrapped up in the romantic notions of this young girl in these alien circumstances. It really takes you back to a time when you were young and naive and every little thing seemed so important and enormously dramatic. This side of Cathy's personality is brought to life so vividly you can feel her pain and her love, her fears and her dreams.

This is such a harrowing, compelling, beautifully written book and it made such an impression on me when i was younger. Even now when I read it it takes me off into a world of pain and sadness in that dim room and dark attic where the only way to see the sun was to climb out the window onto the steep roof high above the ground.

It is definitely worth a read although I doubt it is half as captivating for male readers. It is suitable for young teenagers through to adults although the subject matter is very disturbing at times. Highly reccommended though (I mean if you want to really feel the pain of betrayal and filial responsibilities and also the implications of incest!).

The book is the first in a series, which continues with Petals on the wind, If there be thorns and Seeds of yesterday. These follow Cathy through the rest of her life and explore how the events of her teenage years affect her through adulthood and even affect the lives of her children. Garden of shadows completes the series and tells the story of the grandmother and how she came to be as she is. All are equally good, although Flowers in the attic can easily be read as a novel on its own.

Virginia Andrews wrote a second series of books and a single novel as well as this set, and her unfinished works were completed and published after her death. In my opinion the books published before she died are much better than the ones she didn't not complete herself.