Home » Posts tagged "reading engagement" (Page 6)

The Compulsive Power of Reading: Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews


V.C. Andrews’  1979 novel Flowers in the Attic has been adapted into a Lifetime movie with Ellen Burstyn and Heather Graham, which will premiere later this month (see the trailer here). This movie promises to stay much closer to the book than the 1987 adaptation, which left out some important parts of the book. She also has a  new book coming out soon, The Unwelcomed Child (Andrews died in 1986, after writing just seven novels, and now has over 80 published books– making her possibly the most prolific dead writer ever).

If you were a girl growing up in the 1970s or 1980s you’ve probably at least heard of Flowers in the Attic. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I have a strong memory of reading it. You wouldn’t think that a story about four kids locked in an attic for years would be a compelling read– how much action can there really be? Maybe as a 12 year old the plot didn’t feel as telegraphed to me as it does now. The language feels like it comes straight from “old-skool” romance,  but the setting is gothic and the tone is disturbing. I wasn’t a critical reader at that age, I was just caught up in the story, as told by a grown Cathy Dollanganger about her 12 year old self.  Flowers in the Attic was a compulsive read and I read it cover to cover, and the other books in the Dollanganger saga, although my favorite Andrews book is the stand alone My Sweet Audrina.

At the same time that I am tempted to go back to it, though, I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to do it. It’s like being a moth attracted to bright light– I’m not sure I want to get close enough to go back to the awfulness of the grandmother, the monstrosity of the mother, the incest, rape, physical abuse, and abandonment. It probably doesn’t bother an uncritical teenage reader dealing with unfamiliar (or maybe familiar, but under the surface) emotions and physical changes, but do I want to go there again? Andrews’ books have been compared to the Twilight books because they’re such compulsive reads, across generations–once you start, resistance is futile. Do I really want to lose my weekend to the Dollangangers?

What makes Flowers in the Attic so compelling? Lots of people have tried to come up with an answer to why girls and women would read a story this full of crazysauce (a term I picked up from Sarah Wendell that fits this book so very well) and I’m not sure any of them got it quite right. And unlike Twilight, it doesn’t seem like there will be an entire shelf of knockoff crossover YA creepy family horror stories  in the bookstore anytime soon. Her books, with their distinctive covers, still seem to me like the kind you read under the covers.

In researching V.C. Andrews I discovered that people who asked about books similar to Flowers in the Attic were mostly given lists of Andrews’ books, and more than once someone said that her books are their own genre. In an article on Andrews, Sara Gran and Megan Abbott note:

Though there’s an obvious debt to the Brontë sisters, nineteenth-century sensation novels like Lady Audley’s Secret, and Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic fiction, at heart Andrews’s novels have little in common with the genres where they ought to fit. They’re too offbeat for romance, too slow to qualify as thrillers, too explicit for Gothic, and far too dark and complex for young adult.

Young adult books have gotten pretty dark and complex, if you ask me, but with an audience including 12 year olds and 60 year olds, it does make it difficult to know where to shelve the book.

Curiously, for someone who makes a living duplicating Andrews’ style, Andrew Neiderman, who ghostwrites her books, said in an interview:

The wonder of V.C. Andrews, which makes it hard for people to duplicate, is that it’s not just one genre. It’s not just horror stories or love stories—it’s a recipe, a mixture of these genres in the books that makes it work, that people have not been able to emulate, because a lot of people have tried.

I’d love to know what authors or books he’s referring to, because even if they’re not totally successful, it would be interesting to see what other people have come up with in their attempts to emulate her work. Do people graduate from her books? What do they read next?

Will I go back and read Flowers in the Attic in honor of the new movie? I haven’t decided. But just learning more about Andrews and her books (an interesting challenge) was compelling enough on its own to make me really, really tempted.

 

For some perspectives on the books (and occasionally, some drinking games) here are some links you might check out.

 

“”I May Look Like Her, But Inside I Am Honorable”! Flowers in the Attic, Daughters, and Moms”  by Tammy Oler at Slate.com

 

The Complete V.C. Andrews. This unofficial website links to a variety of articles on V.C. Andrews, her books, and related topics.

 

“Interview with Ann Patty, Editor of Flowers in the Attic“ by Robin Wasserman at The Toast.net

 

“V.C. Andrews and Disability Horror” by Madeleine Lloyd-Davies at The Toast.net. I loved this. I have been thinking about disability horror a lot lately.

 

“Dark Family: V.C. Andrews and the Secret Life of Girls” by Sara Gran and Megan Abbott, in the September 2009 issue of Believer Magazine. This is as close to serious analysis as I found, and I think the authors did a pretty good job of nailing why the books appeal to girls. Although I’m middle-aged, so you would probably be wise to check it against the experience of teen girls of your acquaintance.

 

“Twilight vs. Flowers in the Attic: Sick Sex Smackdown, Eighties Style” by Alyx Dellamonica at Tor.com. Another informal look, this one with some more critical thought put into it. I like Dellamonica’s idea that the book falls into a stretch of development between  “unreal” childhood fears like the monster under the bed and the ability to deal with realistic threats in the wider world. I wasn’t a fan of her conclusion, though.

 

“Lurid: Flowers in the Attic” by Karina Wilson at LitReactor.com. A rather gleeful look back and critical once-over of the author’s personal favorite “Bad Book”.

 

“Flowers in the Attic: Ain’t Sexy, He’s My Brother”. Lizzie Skurnick’s  original column at Jezebel on Flowers in the Attic, which appears in a more polished form in her book Shelf Discovery.

 

“Flower Scowler” by Erin Callahan at Forever  Young Adult. The first post in a series where Callahan reads and dissects each chapter in Flowers in the Attic, which includes the Flowers in the Attic drinking game. This is a very informal, funny examination of the book.

 

“Revisiting My Sixth Grade Bookshelf: Flowers in the Attic” by Ashley Perks at xoJane.com. An informal look back at the book.

 

“In The Attic: Whips, Witches, and a Peculiar Princess” by Gillian Flynn at NPR.org.  The author of Gone Girl writes about her infatuation with the book as a teen and how it inspired her interest in “wicked women”.

 

“Flowers (And Family Dysfunction) in the Attic” by Heidi W. Durrow at NPR.org. Durrow writes about her personal love of the book, no analysis involved.

 

 

 

Posted on January 14, 2014 by , Reply

Teens Are Shameless Readers

Elissa Gershowitz has written recently in Horn Book about the trashy books teens read, and how sharing that they’re reading them to an adult (like, say, the librarian) makes them “avert their eyes”. I think she’s wrong about that. I’d say most librarians these days have a pretty relaxed attitude towards kids’ reading tastes, and are more likely to capitalize on those tastes than judge them. And, more importantly, kids reading what they LIKE to read aren’t ashamed of their tastes. They just don’t read their preferred texts around people who don’t respect their reading choices or take away what they want to read– they find people who are excited about those books, and will give them what they want. Whether adults include or exclude kids’ favorite books on the basis of  whether those books are “trash” or “quality literature”, those books are everywhere. Gershowitz argues that most trashy books have no staying power (some don’t, some do, just like any other kind of book). Mostly, I don’t think writers write their books with the intention of writing classics, with the exception of those literary types bent on writing the Great American Novel.

Gershowitz asks what makes one trashy book the standout above all the others of its kind. Well, today I would say a lot of it has to do with marketing. I was a newly minted children’s librarian widely read in science fiction, fantasy, and children’s books of all kinds, when I first encountered Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (widely considered trash by authorities in the field of children’s literature). My reaction was that it was a pretty good fantasy novel. It wasn’t an instant takeoff– I returned to school at the end of 1999 and hardly heard boo about it. A year later I walked into a Hallmark store and almost crashed into an overwhelming display of  Harry Potter merchandise. I read both Twilight and The Hunger Games before they became massive hits, too. What makes these books “standouts” of epic proportions is cross-marketing that is completely immersive and overpowering. It’s impossible to include Twilight in the same category as some of these other books Gershowitz mentions.

As someone who grew up during the time in which Forever, Go Ask Alice, and Flowers in the Attic were published, I believe those books are standouts in part because they address taboo topics in a frank way. They’re books my parents and teachers weren’t going to put into your hands.  They’re not especially didactic, and the protagonists speak right to you. Yes, even Cathy Dollanganger, locked in her attic in a horrifying situation as gothic as it gets, reflects back pictures that storm inside our heads. On that, I think Gershowitz and I can agree. And there’s some of that in Twilight as well, although where the book stops and the marketing starts is difficult to measure.

Contemporary YA novels are hard to compare because so much of what was taboo at that time is no big deal today. A series like Gossip Girl is like a soap opera on paper. 25 years ago those were (in theory, anyway) for adults only. The paranormal was a tiny piece of the market. With the popularity of Interview with the Vampire and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that changed. The world of children’s and YA literature today is not the same as the one I grew up with. That’s okay, but it makes comparisons difficult. The difference between what makes a book quality literature and what makes it trash changes with time.

But here’s the thing that’s different. Teens today don’t feel like they have to hide their reading tastes from the world. In places and with people who don’t respect them or their reading choices, they aren’t going to share them, but what happens is that those places and people become irrelevant to their lives. If adults don’t address those choices in a positive way, they will find themselves locked out. And reading ‘trashy books’ won’t stop with adulthood– but, for many, it will limit whether they choose to read anything else, or choose to read at all.

 

Posted on June 27, 2013 by , Reply

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney: Reading Aloud With a Child

I have been doing a little academic research into children’s literature and horror recently, and one of the things I’ve seen mentioned multiple times is that children’s literature is different that any other kind, because it’s really written with adults in mind. Let me explain.

It’s mostly adults who write children’s books. Adults decide what books are appropriate for publication for children, edit them, and market them. Adults are the ones who usually buy them. And adults decide how and where they should be made available. Many children’s books are written well beyond the capacity of  the child to read the book independently… so most children’s books, for many years, are also read by, or with adults, to children.

As adults, we have too much of a past to experience a children’s book in the same way a child does, and our roles in the present also change the way we look at them. And that affects the reading experience children have when we read aloud with them.

My mom bought a book containing a variety of stories meant for reading aloud with a child. It’s a strange collection, really, and includes The Shrinking of Treehorn by Florence Parry Heide and The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. My five year old daughter pulled this book out, opened it to the middle and said “I want this one.” She had chosen The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, a picture book by Judith Viorst about a boy grieving for his cat, who has just died. It’s often recommended for use with children when talking about death. Not really a feel good bedtime story. Even though I’ve never had a cat, I tear up at the end. I said, “This is a very sad story. Are you sure you want me to read it?” She did. And so I read it to her. And for her it wasn’t sad. She made a connection between Barney, the cat in the story, and Picky-picky, Ramona Quimby’s cat (in Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books), who dies in the movie, but she wasn’t sad. And the next night at bedtime she wanted it again. And so did her brother. I warned him that it could be sad, but he still wanted to hear it, so I read it again. And it wasn’t sad for him. As an adult who knows how this book is supposed to be used, I didn’t really feel the need for my kids to hear the story. As a mom, I was afraid it would make them sad, and maybe scared, so that it would be hard to go to sleep. And I have heard a few questions about cats and about death in the last day or so, but nothing that seems to make them sad, or scared, or worried. Keeping it away from them because of my own worries, fears, and preconceptions seems, in this case, like it would have been kind of selfish. They don’t appear to have been damaged by the experience, and maybe it has made their lives richer. I think that goes for a lot of books that people worry about putting in the hands of children. I am glad that I didn’t say more than that this was a sad story. Even that gives them a frame that is not their own for understanding what the story means for them.

Reading aloud to children, and with children, is a joy, a pleasure, and sometimes a frustration. And it’s also a responsibility, not just as adults reading for thirty minutes at night with them so they’ll grow up to be independent readers with a love of stories and books (or at least children who can pass the I-READ exam). It is a responsibility, because by what we choose to share and how we feel about children’s books, as adults, as professionals, and as former children, we have the ability to change the way our children see and feel about a book that so very many adults wanted to put into their hands. Once it’s in their hands, though, children can change the book for us, as well.  Reading aloud  with a child alters the world. That’s something to keep in mind.

 

Posted on January 8, 2013 by , Reply
First « 45678 » Last