As a writer, one of the things I’m most curious about is authors with a distinct style. I’m always wondering how they have landed on a style and, more importantly, how they managed to maintain that cult-like fandom. I suppose on some level I’m thinking of Agatha Christie or Stephen King, synonymous kingpins of the medium, reflecting the ultimate potential of what the literary world can offer. While I believe that every author has their own story to tell, it’s interesting to figure out which ones will have any track record, sticking around long after the publication date and discussed in classrooms internationally. I think it’s because, on some level, I want to eventually reach that height even if, at best, I’m more projecting that in the grand if of things, I’m probably only going to have one or two resonating factors.
One of the many authors that I find endlessly fascinating as an entity is V.C. Andrews. To generations, she is known for a style of family drama that’s seeded in dark and disturbing themes that play into a familiar perversity as a true crime podcast. To hear Andrews’ name is to have a whole vision of the worlds she creates, where innocence is torn from youth, the desires of romance and violence intertwining with our own morbid curiosities. We want to learn more, even if they’re ultimately horrifying and taboo.
Nowhere is that presented better than in her original run of book covers. There have been few whose artwork has matched the appeal of owning a paperback. For those unaware, Andrews’ work is often entrenched in mystery, deserving of going in without a clue of what’s about to happen. That starts with the cover, where someone (usually female) is staring out of a window or through a compromised state. When opening the cover, there is an elegantly designed piece of art that depicts something about the novel that seems tame upon entering, but will slowly become more and more disturbing the further in you go.
Andrews knows how to reap sympathy from characters who should be morally reprehensible. In the case of “Flowers in the Attic,” she takes The Dollanganger Family and slowly unravels one of the most dysfunctional families in Late-70s fiction. Protagonist Cathy introduces the world with one of the strongest forms of misdirecting imaginable. In the final days of a stable family, she talks about how everyone has their place, that her mother Corrine had her own curious way of fabricating a positive image in society. To a close reader, there is already something off about The Dollangangers from the certain subtext, but it’s not necessarily horrifying. Chapter by chapter, Andrews does an incredible job of upping the ante, making further and further acts of derangement seem plausible, reflecting a narrative that treats seediness like a tightrope walk.
To tell someone what happens throughout “Flowers in the Attic” is enough to raise a few eyebrows, growing concerned. Nobody could possibly treat their children with such physical and mental abuse, essentially leaving them in a prison metaphorical of childhood itself. They are helpless, pawns used in the hopes of financial gain. They do not exist, losing years of their lives that should be used during puberty to explore romance and build social skills. The way that Andrews describes the family is heartbreaking. Even as she plays into our dark impulses, there is a way that she attaches humanity, never making it fully repulsive or entirely redeemable.
Reading it, there is a part of me that recognizes how easily this could fall into trashy fiction. At times the premise sounds so absurd. Anyone looking at this as a healthy romantic drama has serious psychological issues, and there may be some stipulations around the idea of surviving in an attic for that long in those conditions. So much makes you want to gasp and say “She’d never!” while realizing another sad truth. She has created a web with such sound logic that it all makes sense, reflecting the greed of a family that values wealth and status over personal affection. It makes sense that Cathy is so distraught, lacking a role model that would keep her from giving in to those taboos. It’s gross, making you want to call protective services.
What keeps it from being the type of trash you toss onto an open fire is that Andrews treats it like a prison escape. There is a desire to get to the end where monotony breaks free and there’s the other side, where life truly begins. Even then, there’s a tragedy that their pivotal years have been wasted, forming core memories in the worst possible conditions. On some level, you pity them. On another, you sympathize and realize how difficult their conditions are. Then, in one way that is beyond crazy, Andrews knows how to make themes of loneliness and isolation (not strangers to the average teen novel) make Cathy feel empathetic. She is, after all, like Wendy in “Peter Pan” where she becomes a motherly type before having the capabilities or experience.
The scary part is that for as horrific as this melodrama winds up being, there is plausibility in saying that there’s truth. The fear of having parents unwilling to raise their children to the point of outright neglect is a very uncomfortable subject. While not mirroring events, it reminds me of a story a few years back about a fairly large family who imprisoned the children in their house, never letting them out unsupervised. The one who got to attend college had a parent stand outside, waiting for them to finish. When they went somewhere like Disneyland, they often wore t-shirts along the lines of Dr. Seuss’ Thing One or Thing Two for easy identification. It wasn’t until one of them escaped that they were caught.
I don’t know how that story ends. The news eventually moved on to something else. Even then, it was a moment where you realize how many variables are at play. There is of course questioning the integrity of the parents. How could they do this? The bigger question is if any of the children could be rehabilitated, given a chance to experience joy and happiness. The tragedy is the idea that there’s likely to be intellectual disabilities, a form of distrust, and bad codependency skills that ultimately warp their minds. To the really insensitive, they become burdens on a different system simply because they’re helpless and never had a chance to build skills.
What “Flowers in the Attic” supposes is whether or not it makes you feel worse to have the motivations. Does knowing the hurt that can come from generations in a family change the impact? Whereas the aforementioned news story can exist in my mind with some ambiguity, Andrews forces you to confront the greed and selfishness of the many ways that The Dollanganger Family disables each other’s chance at happiness, often in very irrational ways. There is tension at first, especially when it’s viewed as a short-term problem to gain money, but slowly becomes a never-ending nightmare that continues long after the final pages.
There is a pulp element to everything. It does feel exploitative and relies on giving into impulse emotions. While there’s a sadness to think of the trauma and ramifications of characters, to live in the moment is to find a strangely endearing tale of childhood survival. We all like to imagine our preteen years were the absolute worse, but there’s some solace in knowing that they weren’t THIS bad. We never had to deal with people like that or experience psychological abuse that pretty much seeks to end the family lineage with a foul odor in the attic.
I cannot speak for every book that Andrews has written. I am sure that at some point her work dipped or even became repetitive. She does seem like the sort of author that relies on shock and awe, needing to tap into something ugly inside all of us. Part of it is fun to revel in this moral depravity from the safety of a book, letting imaginations run wild with how that would look. Still, she manages to make the reader curious to know the next event. One minute there is a pit in your stomach, but there’s also the need to know how they find safety, how they will ever escape this madness. Even when the attic becomes more of a tangential plot device, it’s riveting to wonder if anyone can truly escape the cycle of abuse.
And thus, the set-up for a sequel, “Petals on the Wind” is created. Will this be a smutty tell-all that finds Cathy seeking revenge on those who wronged her? Even after throwing the reader through so much heartache, there is that desire to see if things can work out. Andrews, frankly, is an extremely addictive author. She knows how to invest in these characters and create a world with a reliable approach to fiction that is distinctly hers. “Flowers in the Attic” is a triumphant page turner that relies on fiction as an experience, interacting with the reader’s own beliefs in the hopes of making them uncomfortable not only in the horrors they’re witnessing, but the ways it reminds them of small slights in their own life (hopefully not THAT bad, though).
That is why I’ll always find it endlessly fascinating that this was the fiction that was once popular with teenage girls. I think of Sofia Coppola’s Lick the Star (1998), where a group of teens take the wrong advice from “Flowers in the Attic.” I understand that 1979 was a different time for women and fiction, but it’s fascinating to think about how stories of abuse and taboos could be seen as so appealing. Maybe it’s the idea that the world is so horrifying, with the potential to hurt them. It could be that on some level they feel like this already. Still, it makes me concerned that women were sold stories of oppression and helplessness as opposed to the more modern young adult stories of empowerment. I’d need to do more research on it, but it’s quite an interesting look into how a generation was raised to think.
With that said, nothing is more bizarre than Andrews herself. While it makes me happy to know that she was an acclaimed writer who was physically handicapped, there is something to be said for “her” later work. She died in 1986 at the age of 63. It is also said that she released over 90 books that sold over 100 million copies internationally. Not a bad record, but… does something seem off? How did she release so much in such a short time? More importantly, how does she have a new book called “Out of the Rain” that came out LAST MONTH?
Enter Andrew Neiderman. In what is honestly the most interesting aspect of Andrews’ larger career is that she has consistently released books for 35 years despite being dead. There have been whole series created under her name that she probably never thought up. Thanks to ghostwriter Neiderman, her legacy lives on and makes one wonder what the end game is for an author like her. Can one truly imitate her style and maintain a level of success worthy of her best work? It isn’t like David Lagercrantz talking over Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series. Neiderman is selling himself on the appeal of Andrews’ name. What must that be like?
On some level, I get it. Based on “Flowers in the Attic” alone, I am very curious to read another book to see if she can capture this kaleidoscopic view of humanity in such entertaining ways. There’s so much to her world that should be unpleasant and maybe even ignored, but for those who long for Capital-C Conflict, she does it so incredibly well. She is one of those writers so distinct that I admire her without reading a word. How do you make a legacy with nothing more than a logline, a book cover that is the perfect symbolism of something greater inside? I want to know. I want to know so much of what she has to say, and I suppose that’s the biggest compliment I can give to an author that’s easy to call a guilty pleasure but even harder to admit is pretty great at her job.
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