"Flowers in the Attic" fans check in here

[LynneSin]

who else read that book when they were a kid (It was more like a pre-teen/teenager book made for girls). VC Andrews first released that book in 9th grade and everyone I knew was reading it. In fact I have pretty much all VC Andrews books up until I think the Rain series. (the they books just started to get bad and they all seemed to have the same bad plot: Girl comes from dirt poor family, somehow manages to fall in love with the local rich kid who turns out to be her long lost brother. ANd yes, sometimes sex was involved!)

But the best VC Andrews book will always be her first book which is about the Dopplegranger family who end up getting locked into the Attic of their grandparent's family mansion for over 3 years. And of course beeing a teenager locked in an attic for so long means eventually you'll reach that hormonal stage that even having sex with your own sibling seems normal

Boy they don't write stuff like this anymore!

[Shell Beau]

1. I read a lot of VC Andrews as a child.

I absolutely loved it. I felt like I was grown when I read those books.

[clydefrand]

4. I was GROWN up, but not past 5'2". But I was old when I read her

books, but they all started sounding the same to me as well. Just a little weird too. But maybe I should read all the others she's written and get off this 'puter posting and reading on DU.

[LynneSin]

6. When she changed it from 1 girl to 4 girls per series, I quit buying them

It use to be the story of 1 girl; although eventually that one girl would have a baby girl (usually illegimately) and 2-3 books into the series the mother would die and the story would be about the daughter.

But then she switched it so the series would tell the story of 4 different girls and then the 5th book would be about the 4 girls together and I just didn't bother because at that point I realized I was a 30-something girl reading books meant for 10 year olds.

BTW, I keep hoping they would make a real movie out of the "Flowers in the Attic" series. They made the one movie with Kristie Swanson playing Cathy but it was horribly done and they killed the mother in the end instead of setting it up for the Sequel (mother lasted until the 3rd novel "If there be Thorns")

[flamingyouth]

2. Oh - I remember reading that the summer between 8th & 9th grades

A friend and I went up to her grandparents' cabin on Whidbey Island and we were both reading that book, totally engrossed in it. That was a great book, I should reread it, actually. Totally intense.

[LynneSin]

3. Actually Petals on the Wind was my personal favorite

They leave the attic, try to have a normal life and Cathy exacts revenge on the mother. BUt I always thought it was kinda creepy with that relationship she had with her adopted guardian Paul Winslow (like sleeping with her brother and her mother's second husband wasn't creepy enough!)

[Shell Beau]

5. I forgot about what actually happened in those

books, but you are right. Now it is coming back to me.

[Maddy McCall]

7. I had never read anything by VC Andrews until two years ago.

Someone left one of her books by the hotel pool--I was on vacation--and I spent the rest of my vacation reading that book.

I can't even realize what the title was now. It was about a blonde haired girl, and I think it has a sequel.

Anyone know?

[LynneSin]

11. You know, that information doesn't narrow it down

All of the books are sequels except "My Sweet Audrina". In fact all of the series include pretty much some of the same plot lines including

• The Girl usually has incestuous thoughts/relations either towards someone who turns out to be her half-brother OR someone she thought was her brother but turns out they weren't related
  
• The Girl usually is a prodigy is some sort of artistic skill (we've had singing, ballet, art and even fiddling)
  
• The Girl is usually extremely dirt poor until either 1 or both of her parents die in some tragic death and she finds out the richest family in the area is actually her parents
  
• The above mentioned Rich family in town who ends up being her true parents will all hate her except one eccentric member of the family (and possibly the brother who was actually a crush she had before finding out they were related)
  
• When the head of the Richest family who is now the parent of The Girl dies, he/she will have a codicil in the will that gives all the money to her and thus making the rest of the family hate her even more
  
• The Girl will usually be deflowered by the wrong boy and that one union will likely end in pregnancy. BTW, all of the pregnancies result in a girl
  
• Her ultimately true love will marry The Girl when she finds out she's pregnant
  
• Eventually (usually by the 4th book) The Girl and her husband (who may be the parent of the child or the brother of the Girl) will die and the remaining books in the series will be about the daughter of The Girl and all her problems.
  
• The daughter of The Girl will somehow not get along very well with her guardians and will run away to some obscure family member related to The Girl's original parents (the ones who first raised her until she found out she was adopted illegally).
  
  
  I think there were at least 3 series with blonde girls, one brunette, 1 red-head and finally an AFrican-American (although it turns out she was only half black when she found out she was adopted and her real parents were the Rich Families in the area).
  
  I could write a VC Andrews book!
  

[jus_the_facts]

8. I did.....back in jr. high.....

....and I agree The Flowers In The Attic series was her best...but the movie sucked ASS! :hi:

[Texasgal]

9. How funny!

I haven't thought about the flowers in the attic series in long time!!

From what I can remember.... didn't the older brother and sister end up sleeping with each other?

[Trigger Hippie]

10. Yeah, I read it

when I was 13 or so. They were pretty trashy, but good trashy. :)

[Ladyhawk]

12. I really enjoyed the series about the Dollanganger kids.

The first book was, of course, the best. It's weird how the mother turns from a good person into someone willing to kill her own kids to inherit a fortune.

I just read the story of David Pelzer, a true story. He describes how his mother was a good parent, then slowly became more and more evil as alcoholism destroyed her. I want to read the sequels to find out what possessed the crazy woman to do what she did. Psychology interests me.

[LynneSin]

14. She wasn't trying to kill them - just make them a lil bit sick

I'm suprised no one found Cory's body since he was just tossed in a ditch along the side of the road

[Ladyhawk]

15. I never believed that line she gave. :)

And she put Cory's body in the attic, remember? It was in a separate part, only open to the main door. That's why she later burned down the mansion--to hide the evidence. The fire started in the attic.

[LynneSin]

16. Yes but I thought it was all of the evidence in the attic

remember all their toys and drawings were still intact from the day they left. She went to the attic and hung out there until the clock struck midnight and she exacted her revenge.

But you're right - originally she told Cathy that Cory was tossed in a ravine, but later Cathy said something smelled funny in the attic and suspected it was Cory's dead body.

But then again in that old house, would a dead body eventually stink up everything?

[Ladyhawk]

17. I think the body was there. :)

It was a separate room where the smell would be contained.

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. My mom threw it out when she caught me reading it. Weirdly, my

American lit teacher, thinking i was one of those kids who liked the series (i didn't, really) assigned me two Joyce Carol Oates novels to read that put the Andrews books to shame both prosaically and in weirdness.

[redqueen]

18. I read that as an adult.

Based on my mother in law's recommendation. It was weird.

[Darth_Kitten]

19. it takes me back........

where everybody blond and blue eyed living in an attic was beautiful. :)

[LynneSin]

20. I wanted to live in the attic!!

Of course I wanted a different brother since my brother wasn't blonde hair blue eyes and not someone I was particularly attracted to.

That whole family was messed up. In Flowers in the Attic, their parents, Corrine & Christoper Sr, were originally thought to be Half-Uncle/Half-neice (related through the grandfather - Cathy & Chris's great-grandfather). But in the final book which was a prequel to Flowers in the Attic it turned out that Corrine & Christopher Sr were actually half-brother/sister sharing the same father (who was Cathy & Chris's grandfather). Thank goodness there was no baby after Cathy & Chris had sex

[Darth_Kitten]

21. Too bad they had to get rid of Carrie

after all, she would have known that Cathy and Chris were an item. ;)

:silly:

[LynneSin]

23. But Carrie's death gave Cathy more reason for revenge on her mother

and without Carrie living in her home, it made it easier for Cathy to have the affair with Bart (her mother's second husband)

[Darth_Kitten]

27. Poor Carrie didn't get any action

:(

[YellowRubberDuckie]

22. I loved the Flowers in the Attic Series.

I tried to read the others, but I couldn't really get into them. My favorite was the last one. It made me just bawl.
Duckie

[LynneSin]

24. When you say "Last One" you mean the prequel to the series?

I forget the name, but it pretty much explained the whole backstory of the Grandmother and all the illicit affairs. I almost felt sorry for the grandmother when I found out how she ended up in a loveless marriage to a philandering husband

[YellowRubberDuckie]

25. No...The last one with the kids...

I read the prequel, but I didn't care for it.
Duckie

[kitkatrose]

26. I remember VC Andrews.

I read it in the 9th grade when I worked in the school library and had nothing to do. "Flowers in the Attic" was good, creepy, but good. The others in that series were okay, but not as good as the first one or the prequel about the grandma. I read all the other series up until the Orphan series. All the others were the same damn plot line. But my favorite is "My Sweet Audrina." It's the only one I can still read now without really wanting to hurl.

[thinkingwoman]

28. read the entire series

eewwwww

But I could not put them down.

[Lilyhoney]

29. I read Flowers when I was 10.

I read maybe 2 more but then stopped.

[liontamer]

30. The reason the books seem repetitive ...

is that they don't all have the same author. After vc andrews died, her family realized they had a gold mine and started hiring authors to write more "vc andrews" books

p.s.
"my sweet audrina" was(is) my favorite

[LynneSin]

32. Yep

See one of my above posts for the plotlines for all of the VC Andrews books.

It's a shame, they had something good with the First series and even the Casteel series was decent. From there it went downhill and then they did the Orphans series and just totally lost their market.

I never got into My Sweet Audrina even though I have my original copy of the book.

[liontamer]

34. does that mean you didn't finish it

Because if you didn't get to the big reveal about the "first and best" audrina, you NEED to read it NOW!

[LynneSin]

36. I read the whole book

Just never read it again

[Darth_Kitten]

31. How did Cathy hook up with Bart again?

And what happened to ole Bart anyways? after he got Cathy pregnant?

I forgot. :(

[NMMNG]

37. Cathy purposely hooked up with Bart to try to steal him from her mother

It was all part of her grand plan of revenge against mom. After Cathy got pregnant Bart was still planning on staying with Corrine until the night of the confrontation at the big party in the Foxworth mansion. Once he found out that everything Cathy had been telling him was actually true he was going to leave Corrine and be with Cathy. However Corrine set fire to the mansion and when she realized he was going to leave her she sent him back inside to retrieve her mother, knowing he'd never make it out alive. She couldn't tolerate the idea of losing him to her own daughter, and would rather see him dead.

[LynneSin]

39. She found a way to meet Bart when she needed a lawyer

to help with the insurance problems after her first husband Julian had died (Julian was in a bad accident and committed suicide when he overheard his mother say that he could no longer dance because of injuries do to the car accident). After Julian's death, Cathy purposively moved back home to her guardian/former fiance's home of Paul Sheffield. He happened to live in the town that neighbors Bart's home town, so Cathy looked him up and used them as a lawyer to get her insurance claim.

[Parche]

33. book

The Chronicles of Narnia were better!!!...of course I am a guy...
and never read Flowers in the attic

[liontamer]

35. the chronicles of narnia were very good

but they really lacked in sex scenes. Now if peter had shown lucy his "royal sceptre"... on second thought ewww.

[NMMNG]

38. I read FITA when I was around 13 or 14 and loved it

I immediately read the others as soon as I could. Then as the Heaven series came out I did the same. Likewise with Dawn. However after the Heaven books, as Andrews was dead and they were being written by ghost writers, were decidely inferior. The basic pattern that developed was "girl goes from rags to riches, finds a bunch of insidious hidden secrets, becomes victim of rape (likely incestuous)" and so on. I got bored and stopped reading them as they no longer held the magic they'd had when Andrews was writing them. However I still re-read the Dollanganger series at least once a year, and have FITA on CD. Once the other books show up at the public library on CD I'm going to burn them so I'll have copies of my own.

As to the movie of FITA, I was ecstatic when I heard that it had been made. I was eagerly anticipating it for many years. Then when I saw it I was heartbroken. Jeffrey Bloom just ruined it--I kept screaming in my mind "that should have been done differently" or "that's not how that went". I admit Louise Fletcher was a wonderful pick for the Grandmother but other than that the cast was pretty bad. And the whole idea of killing the mother off at the end was asinine--it nixed entirely the possibility of doing any of the sequels!


Edited to add content

[really annoyed]

40. Did a book report!

It was in junior high. Read the novel twice. Loved it.

[Rhiannon12866]

41. Yes, I read them all, as did my friend!

I got them for her, for a present, and read them when she was done. In the beginning, I couldn't put them down, but then the incest finally got to me. I never read another word!:puke:

[LynneSin]

42. Only the first series had real incest

But then again those 2 kids were messed up trapped inside that attic for 3+ years. THe other series would have some incestous overtones but no actual incest. Like the Cutler series - Dawn's first boyfriend turned out to be her brother but they never consumated their relationship. Instead she married the person she thought was her brother but they actually had no blood relations whatsoever.

[Rhiannon12866]

43. Well, I only read the first series: "Flowers in the Attic," etc.

And I don't think that I ever got through all the books. The main character (Cathy?) had a couple of husbands and a child by each of them, as I remember. (This was a long time ago, early '80s:shrug:) But the one that she ended up with her brother, and that was what finally got to me. And, if I remember, didn't the twins die of being poisoned? Sprinkled like sugar on donuts, by their mother? That was also really pretty demented. I don't know how I stuck with them as long as I did. I do remember thinking that the covers were cool.:eyes:

[LynneSin]

44. The one she had with her brother was one they adopted

a friend of their family was killed in a car accident and Cathy & her husband (the brother) ended up adopting the girl.

The first twin died of Arsenic poisoning while living in the attic. The other twin Carrie committed suicide using the same method about 20 years later. Carrie had found what she thought was the love of her life, but when her fiance wanted to be a pastor, she thought she wasn't good enough to be a pastor's wife (all those years living in the Attic being told she was the 'Devil's Spawn' pretty much messed her brain up!)

[Rhiannon12866]

48. I thought she had a couple of kids with a couple of husbands (boys)

But kept them when she finally got together with her brother (Chris?). I do remember the twin dying and, now that you mention it, the other one using the same method. Wasn't the mother poisoning them and the brother died because his sister gave him her food? Totally creepy and not for kids! Yikes!
:wow:

[LynneSin]

49. Um, no

Ok, here are the kids that Cathy had:
Jory - Fathered by her first husband Julian
Bart - Fathered by the affair she had with her mother's current husband
Cindy - Adopted after Cindy's mother died in an accident.

In "IF there be Thorns" Cathy pretty much lost everyone she has loved (Julian, Bart and even Paul her guardian/fiance) has passed away. Her and Chris decide to move to California to set up a home far away from what they hope is their past. Chris has always passed himself off as Paul's lil brother and uses the name Chrisopher Sheffield. And at this point, yes, they're shacking up and having sex. Mind you by now they're in late 30s and life has been pretty harsh to both of them.

Basically in Thorns, the mother, whom Chris & Cathy assume is still in the nut house, actually moves in next door to Chris & Cathy but the mother keeps herself hidden to both of them. The mother then lures Bart into her home and her and her butler pretty much start fucking with Bart's brain. The mother wants to treat Bart like the child she could never have with her husband (Bart Sr - btw, the grandfather's cocidil said she would lose everything if she ever had kids) and the butler is pulling that extreme xtian repent or rot in hell type stuff on Bart. Bart pretty much becomes a wack job to Jory (now a budding Ballet dancer like his mom & dad Julian) and Cindy, who is just one of those adoringly cute kids. All Hell breaks lose when Cathy & Chris finally discover the source to Bart's corruption, the mother dies and leaves everything including Foxworth Hall Mansion in Virginia to lil Bart. But the final results is that Cathy & Chris realize that they cannot keep living like 'husband & wife' since well, they're actually brother & sister. But they still do live together

Now the next book is where it gets kinda crazy. Now all of Cathy's kids are adults and Bart finally gets to the age where he inherits Foxworth Mansion and all the Foxworth money left to him. Julian becomes a very sucessful ballet dancer and marries his childhood sweetheart who happens to be pregnant with twins. And Cindy basically becomes this horny but virginal teenage girl. They all go Foxworth Hall to Celebrate Bart's upcoming birthday. As a birthday present Jory performs a ballet but an freak accident during the performance leaves Jory paralysised from the waste down and ending Jory's career. JOry's wife has twins and an affair with Barb but eventually runs away because she's going nuts living in Foxworth Hall and wants to go back to being a ballet dancer. Bart has a new butler who is screwing with his head - Joel Foxworth, the long lost presumed dead brother of Corrine Foxworth (The mother of Cathy, Chris, etc). This guy is even nuttier than the rest of his family and messes with an already fucked up Bart. All hell breaks lose but Bart finally forgives his mother - but after Chris passes away. His source of anger was always the fact that basically his parents were siblings. In the end Bart & Cindy become tele-evanglists

Yes, I've read the books a few times :crazy:

The finally book actually was a prequel that explains why this family was so screwed up in the beginning. BTW, here is the Foxworth family tree

http://www.completevca.com/lib_doll_tree.shtml

[Rhiannon12866]

53. Thanks for all the info, LOL! It's all coming back to me!

I believe I read through the book where the mother dies. That plot line rings a bell with me, about the mother luring Bart into her home. I guess that I couldn't take anymore, after that one. Before, it was just a matter of having to find out what happened next. And I was often sorry I did! Yikes! This author had some kind of warped imagination! But what does the popularity of these books say about the rest of us?!:shrug::crazy:

[Enraged_Ape]

45. 3 years in an attic? What did they do for food and water?

Where did they excrete? :shrug:

Never read the books, but I used to see girls carrying them around all the time in high school.

[LaurenG]

46. Granny and mom

would bring food and water with a little something something added.

[LynneSin]

47. The attic

They were living in one of the largest mansions owned by one of the wealthiest families in Virginia (somewhere in the Blue Mountain Region of the state). The home was so large there was a wing to the mansion that hardly anyone used and at the end of the wing was access to the attic.

The enterance to the attic was actually a room about 16x16 (it's in the book) that had 2 double beds, a chest of drawers, an ancient oriental rug and 2 pictures that looked like Goya (they were scenes from Hell). There was also a small bathroom with a tub adjcent to the room and a stairwell that led to the attic. In the attic was a small school room.

In a nutshell, previous generations of Foxworths would homeschool their kids in that small classroom at the one corner of the attic. In the prequel book, we found out that the grandfather had an affair with his father's 2nd wife (who was like 50 some years his junior) and that affair resulted in Christopher Sr who ultimately married Corrine (the mother in the Flowers in the Attic) and had Christopher, Cathy, Carrie & Cory. When the mistress was pregnant, she was hidden in that same attic throughout her pregnancy.

So, the 4 kids were hid in an attic already equipped for people to live there. The grandmother would bring a picnic basket each morning with the food they were allowed throughout the day (no candy - they kids would not be allowed to see a dentist). The grandmother told the help that their were mice in the attic and that's why she took food up there each morning and technically those mice were being fed arsenic - just a little bit to make them sick

[Enraged_Ape]

50. Now, that is just weird

I might have to read this.

[MiniMandaRuth]

51. I loved flowers in the attic!

One of my fav books as of now, and about half way through the second one.

[LynneSin]

52. Let's us know what you think and welcome to DU

:hi: