Once upon a time, in a mansion deep in the heart of the South, a beautiful blond princess borne to a heartless, cold woman and a cold, soulless man, fell illicitly in love with a beautiful blond prince. This beautiful blond prince happens to be the very much younger half-brother of her father, which makes him a dirty uncle, though not quite so dirty, and yet dirty all the same. The parents of the princess who are very religious people are not so happy with this. They disinherit the princess and the uncle and throw them out of the mansion. The princess and the uncle, shamed and utterly humiliated, flee in the dead of night, never to be heard from in polite society ever again.

But fate is seemingly kind to pretty, blond people and the princess called Corinne and the dirty uncle called Christopher, change their last name to Dollaganger, manage to build a happy little life together, in love and utterly ensnared with each other’s remarkable golden blond looks. Genetics be damned, the two pretty pretty people make love like pretty pretty blond monkeys and produce two perfectly beautiful blond and blue eyed children with two arms, two legs, and are luckily intelligent and talented in their own special way. The blond girl-child is named Cathy and the blond boy-child is named Christopher, after their father. The two children are so utterly perfect and doll-like that they are nicknamed the Dresden Dolls. The girl-child is beloved by the father and shows signs of growing up to be one of those creatures seeking a man to marry who will love her the way Daddy had loved her. The boy-child is favored by the mommy. The mother Corrine, unsatisfied with her current lot and practically mocking fate to give her mutant deformed babies, gets pregnant again and has two more perfectly golden blond babies, fraternal twins called Cory and Carrie. Cathy pouts when she discovers she will no longer be the baby of the family and solicits a promise from her daddy that he will not love the new girl-child more than he loves her and as a testament to that promise, Daddy puts on a heart-shaped garnet ring on Cathy’s tiny doll-like finger.

The Dollagangers live happily for a bit, though it’s obvious there are some unsavory things brewing in the mist. Young Cathy, for example, seems unhealthily attached to her father and is almost hostile to her mother. Young Christopher, on the other hand, thinks the world of his mother and that all women should strive to be like her, the paragon of womanly perfection. The twins Carrie and Cory are left to their own devices, but that’s okay because they’re eerily attached to each other and speak their own alien language. And then Fate decides she’s sick of the Dollagangers creepy little homelife and takes away the father with a brutal car accident (VC Andrews’ favorite character-killer). According to the police, he would have walked away from the initial impact with only minor bruises and scrapes, if his car hadn’t been hit by another car, causing it roll over and over, and explode into flames. Cathy is despondent, Mother doesn’t know what to do because she had been raised only to depend on a man and really knows nothing about living in the real world without one, and little Christopher realizes he is now the man of the house. The twins Carrie and Cory coo in the corner and wonder what the hell is going on.

Corrine, unable to cope with the mounting unpaid bills and her own inability to take care of herself much less her four growing children, write and plead with her truly evil, unforgiving parents to take herself and her little family in. When inquisitive little Cathy asks why Corrine was disinherited in the first place, Corrine is forced to admit that she married her dirty uncle and her parents were disgusted with her. She explains to her children that her family is rich—very, very, very rich—and they could be the heirs to a great fortune if Corrine could only get her father to forgive her. The letter from Corrine’s mother finally arrives and Corrine commands her children to pack as lightly as they could and ushers them into a train in the dead of night—lest they are seen by debt collectors—bound for Virginia. When the train gets to Virginia, Cathy is confused when her mother asks the conductor to stop in the middle of nowhere so that they can get off. Corrine tells the children that they would have to hike to the mansion now. Corrine reasons that the father does not know about the children, so Corrine would have to hide the children in the attic of the mansion first before catching up to the train at the main stop and pretending she had traveled by herself. Corrine begs Cathy to understand that the father must forgive Corrine first before she could introduce the children to him and she’s absolutely sure that the evil father will love the beautiful blond children as much as they’ve ever been loved by their beautiful blond parents.

The children are ushered into the attic via a hidden staircase by their apologetic, anxious mother and a large, forbidding, austere woman that Corrine introduces as the children’s grandmother. The woman calls the children “devil’s issue” and says they should never have been born because they are an abomination. Corrine assures her beautiful blond babies that it will only be for the night, two at most, and then they will be let out of the attic and they can all live happily ever after in the lap of luxury. Cathy is suspicious, but allows herself to be convinced even as doubt and resentment begin to fester in her tiny little heart. She studies the dusty, dank room and glares at her mother, who smiles feebly. Cathy frowns at the two beds. The grandmother orders that the girls will share one bed and the boys will share the other. And they are never ever to be naked in each other’s presence. And to be very, very quiet or they will get the brunt of her cold rage. Corrine promises she will see them soon and blows kisses before she is dragged out of the door by the wide-shouldered grandmother. The four beautiful blond children stare in horror at the closing door and gulp as the lock ominously clicks.

The overnight stay turns into three days, stretches into a week, then a month. Corrine sneaks a visit to the children as often as she can, each time promising them that it will be just a little bit more. The father, it turns out, is a little more unforgiving than she remembered and with that, she shows the children the whipping lashes on her back. Her punishment, she says. The grandfather will die soon, she tells the children, and they will inherit everything and they’re all going to be so filthy rich. The children plot to win over the grandmother, but that proves to be an impossible task because the woman hates them and refuses to talk to them every morning that she hauls up the big picnic basket filled with the children’s provisions for the day. At first, they are veritable feasts, each meal more delicious than the next. And then, little by little, the quality of the food they are brought begins to deteriorate: the chicken is bland and cold, the bread is stale, there’s never any dessert, and the soup is never ever hot. Even the mother’s visits become more infrequent. And yet each time, she seems to be more beautiful, cheerful, happier, and healthier than she has ever been, bringing them lavish gifts and solemn promises that the day they are set free will be soon, a week at most. Much to the dismay of her brother Chris, Cathy begins to taunt her mother, confronting her with her lies: “You said it was just going to be another week, Mother,” “Where have you been, Mother?” and “Why haven’t you come to visit us in a month, Mother?”

As the months stretch into years, the children entertain each other by cleaning up the attic and making it a more livable space. Cathy dreams of becoming a prima ballerina and practices with the barre that Chris has installed for her. Chris wants to become a doctor someday, poring over the books their mother brings especially for him. The two of them become the default parents of their two younger siblings, rousing them from their nightmares, staying up to watch over them when they have a cold, comforting them when they are hurt. But because they are deprived of sunlight, the twins remain sickly and thin, their heads growing much faster than their bodies. They are pale and wan, crying for their mother. Cathy, feeling helpless and unable to do more for the twins, begins to blame the mother, hating her for putting them in such a dreadful situation, even as Chris attempts to placate her, inventing excuses for why their mother hasn’t visited them in two months.

With Cathy growing more embittered, Chris half-heartedly believing that their mother still loves them, and the twins becoming more wan and sickly each day, they stare fruitlessly at the door, waiting. But the door remains locked. And no one ever comes to guide them out.

If you think this story is about four children who eventually win over their grandparents, the servants, and their own selfish, inconsiderate mother with their winsome, charming ways and live happily ever after, you are wrong. I saw the movie before I read the book. I was maybe eleven years old. It was two o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t sleep because I had the worst head cold, so I was browsing through the channels, and stumbled upon the movie on TBS. There was Kristy Swanson from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, some guy whom I always thought was a blond Craig Sheffer, and two creepy blond children. They were locked in an attic by their mother and grandmother for four years and Kristy Swanson and the blond not-Craig Sheffer were starting to give each other looks that said, “Hey, how you doin’?” And I was like, “Ewwwww!” but I was fascinated and kept watching. I was in the 7th grade when I found the book by V.C. Andrews. I was looking for some Babysitters’ Club books when I came across Flowers in the Attic. I brought it home and devoured it, neglecting my homework, chores, dinner, and favorite TV shows, one of which was Beverly Hills, 90210. I was hooked: disgusted, scared, creeped out, and yet breathless for the moment that Cathy and Chris might finally kiss… yeah, yeah, I was twelve, all right?

This book is about the ultimate evil: a mother who deliberately locks up her own children in an attic so she can pretend to be a single woman, living a life of luxury and riches that they will never know, all the while promising her children that everything will be okay. The mother figure is the one person a child should be able to trust, when she tells you “It’s all right, sweetie, there are no monsters in the dark,” a child should be able to believe her. It doesn’t quite work when the mother IS the monster in the dark. Corrine is manipulative, greedy, and will stop at nothing to get what she wants, even if it means torturing her own children. Which brings me to what made me feel really uncomfortable about this book: there is not one redeemable female character in it. Every woman in this book, down to the five-year-old Carrie, is despicable. It pits woman against woman, mother against daughter, and sister against sister at every turn. Olivia, the grandmother, is embittered, overly religious, uncaring, and punishes her own daughter through her children because the daughter eloped with her own uncle while she herself is unloved by a cheating, philandering husband who sleeps with the wife of his own brother and gets her pregnant. Corrine, seemingly well-intentioned and a loving, though clueless mother, collapses emotionally after the death of her husband, and in her desperation, begs her cruel, sadistic parents to take her back, forsaking her children when her parents tell her that they’re not part of the deal. Cathy, though young and inexperienced, is already vindictive and suspicious, plotting the downfall of her mother and using her not inconsiderable charms to manipulate her brother who already sees her in a not-quite brotherly way. Carrie, the child, just whines and… is annoying. The males in this book, however, are portrayed as weak creatures who are easily swayed by feminine wiles, susceptible to the lures of the flesh and other vices, and… well, they have this tendency to succumb to their dirty, dirty urges, and rape the woman when the need shoved them to do so.

What makes this book a classic, a total smorgasbord of cheese and over-the-top what-the-fuckery that would make a Mexican telenovela veteran writer go, “What the shit was that?!?” is the overwrought, overcooked prose. The seventeen year old MALE Chris, for example, talks like Dame Barbara Cartland wrote. The entire third act was basically Chris narrating the whole thing to Cathy complete with lurid descriptions of everything down to the furniture and their mother’s Joan Collins wardrobe and dialogue tags with adverbs. This book would not have worked without it. It had to be lurid and over-the-top and cheesy because otherwise the contents and the plot are probably scary enough to make you have nightmares for years. There’s poison, incest, torture, unkind grandmothers who give her grandchildren spoiled chicken and stale bread instead of warm gingerbread cookies, creepy dirty uncles, blond-haired blue-eyed children whose heads are too big for their bodies, a dusty dirty attic with a toilet that tends to get backed up and no way to unclog it except with your hands and a wire hanger, daddies dying in a massive car explosion, and pretty blond girls who have to go bald because their evil grandmothers poured hot tar on their hair while they’re sleeping. This book also made me afraid of powdered donuts, mice, and sitting in a crowded, hot bus getting progressively nauseous without anywhere to throw up. The bad—nay, dramatic writing exists to protect the reader from the cornucopia of evil things happening in this book, so you can tell yourself afterward that it’s just a fairytale as conceived by the bastard child of Dame Barbara Cartland and Clive Barker. That’s all it is.

Did I ever tell you about my irrational, yet bowel-loosening fear of blond-haired, blue-eyed children?

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: A, Young Adult, Suspense/Horror, Verdict: AWESOME!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.