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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

Crossover Readers

A lot of publicity has gone to the newly recognized audience of “crossover readers,” an audience that only really emerged into the mainstream with the success of Harry Potter. Crossover readers returning to (or discovering) YA fiction are now an audience to be reckoned with, and some publishers are even experimenting with marketing to an audience that might be outgrowing YA books and wants titles more reflective of those in-between years that exist now from the time at which you finish high school and the time you truly declare your independence.

It’s great that this crossover audience is getting some attention. But what’s interesting is that as we talk about adults crossing over to a genre aimed at teens, there is a group aged 10-14 (or, depending on who you talk to, 8-12) that most people refer to as “tweens” (which is a term I hate). And that group is crossing over to read not just YA fiction targeted at a teen audience of ages 15 and up, but adult novels. This isn’t new. YA fiction didn’t always exist, and the books that did weren’t necessarily the ones that rang the bells of these kids, who are maybe not quite ready to leave the children’s section completely (there are some extremely awesome books for middle grade readers)but are also ready to strike out for the books their parents have hidden in a box in the back of their closet. Today when we think of middle grade students and horror, Goosebumps is what usually comes to mind, but oh my gosh, do you have any idea how many kids between 8 and 12 have read Stephen King’s IT? I asked a group of women on Facebook what book had scared them the most as a kid, and one of them said IT, which she had read at age 8 (when asked if she would give it to her kids at that age, she gave me a resounding NO). Erin Morgenstern, on NPR’s Risky Reads, wrote about reading IT first at age 12 (link here). If you read through the comments, you’ll see how young kids often are when they start reading Stephen King. One commenter said “I went straight for Stephen King in fifth grade.” Another commenter started reading King at age 9. I myself remember reading IT when I was about 12… so, you see, those older readers in the children’s section of the library, are getting their books from everywhere. Morgenstern’s article appeared as part of a series by NPR called PG-13: Risky Reads, in which authors discuss the books that, as teens, changed their lives. Some of these are definitely YA, some would be considered adult fiction, but, in spite of the title of this series, many of these books were also read by kids much younger than 13.

This NPR series reminds me a lot of a book by Lizzie Skurnick, Shelf Discovery, that I read some time ago– it actually has covered some of the same books. Shelf Discovery was compiled from a column at Jezebel called Fine Lines (archives are at the bottom of the article), where she (and some others) write about fiction read by this same age group–middle graders and teens– mostly titles girls in that age group would have read as they grew up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s Crossing over directly from children’s books to adult fiction at that time really isn’t all that uncommon, and that may be why there are so many challenges to books for children and teens. It’s nice to pretend that each kind of reader stays sorted into their little box, and it’s true that some will take the path we expect, or direct them on, or that marketers try to push them on. But really, each reader is different, every kid is different, and there is no sudden revolution, just a world of books and assorted related media that lead in a multitude of ways to discovering who you are as a reader, and who you are in life.

Am I saying that as librarians, educators, and parents, we should be handing our eight year olds Stephen King? No, absolutely not. But many of you probably remember reading books like Flowers in the Attic and The Grounding of Group Six before you were fifteen, and it’s good to remember that kids aren’t getting their books just from the library, and to remember what it was like to be that age and read the books in that box under the bed, when you look at and think about your own young reader. And, as an elementary school librarian recently asked me (to paraphrase) “They’re beyond Goosebumps-, and ready for something more– what can I give them next?”

Posted on February 1, 2013 by , Reply

RA For All: Horror: 31 Days of Horror Project

MonsterLibrarian.com was pleased to be included in Becky Siegel Spratford’s project 31 Days of Horror over at her blog RA for All: Horror. Becky is the expert in reader’s advisory in the horror genre, so if you haven’t heard of her and are looking for a great resource go check her blog out!

The post went up a couple of days ago. Click here to go directly to our guest post there. I hope you’ll also take some time to see who else is featured over there this month– so far, it’s been interesting! Or, if you would rather just keep reading, I’ll include what I wrote below, although none of the links that I included there are active. But you really should go check RA for All: Horror out.

 

TRENDS IN THE HORROR GENRE
By Kirsten Kowalewski

Many of the trends in horror fiction right now reflect trends in publishing and reading in general. Anyone who follows books at all, or has been to the bookstore recently, will note an overwhelming number of YA titles devoted to the supernatural, as well as dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. So results of a recent study by Bowker Market Research, that show that 55% of YA books (targeted at ages 12-17) are purchased by adults reflect a notable trend not just in general but for the horror genre. The trend towards adults reading YA books is now so strong that popular writers of adult horror, such as Jonathan Maberry are now writing YA titles, and publishers of adult horror are now starting YA imprints–ChiZine Publications recently announced that it will introduce a new imprint, ChiTeen, in 2014.

Something to remember as you consider these numbers is that teens also read a lot of adult fiction. In her book Shelf Discovery, Lizzie Skurnick touches on this, as she recalls reading adult books like Jaws and raiding her parents’ bookshelves , in addition to reading contemporary YA fiction (and as Becky noted in this blog post, as teens are new to the genre, introducing them to these more mature titles is a great way to circulate your backlist). Many, many people start reading Stephen King and other adult horror novels as teens. What young adults read isn’t necessarily fiction targeted at young adults, any more than what adults read is targeted to them.

At MonsterLibrarian.com, we’ve reviewed books with monsters in them that fall all along the spectrum, and the most popular searches for book lists are for YA vampire books and paranormal romances. These are so popular that we started a blog, Reading Bites, just for this audience. However, there seems to be agreement between horror readers and librarians that the vampire novel, for the most part, has lost its bite; as one middle school librarian noted to me recently, middle school girls aren’t scared by a vampire who will take them to the prom. As vampires bleed into the genres of romance and mystery, hardcore horror readers, who prefer their monsters to be monstrous, have started to turn away from this subgenre. Make sure you know what a reader wants when he or she asks for a vampire book.

The trend in YA fiction towards dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, influenced by The Hunger Games, also seems to frequently take on a romantic angle, and often portrays the main characters as catalysts for societal change. Post-apocalyptic fiction seems to be mainly reflected in adult horror in the subgenre of zombie fiction, where the focus is usually on the survivors of a post-apocalyptic event doing their best to survive a zombie invasion. Lovers of this subgenre are sometimes content to read the same kind of story over and over—they like the fast-paced action and gore and aren’t necessarily interested in character development—but in recent years there have been some fresh takes on a genre that, while popular, was starting to get a bit stale (you can see what I mean by checking out our list of zombie titles). Mad science is also taking off in interesting directions, with plague viruses, technology gone mad, genetic manipulation, and man-made monsters showing up with frequency in both YA and adult fiction. One of the scariest books I’ve read in the past twelve months was Kenneth Oppell’s This Dark Endeavor (reviewed here), a prequel to Mary Shelley’s classic horror story Frankenstein. Both Oppell’s short novel and Shelley’s original appeared together in the same ebook. Now that’s a hook! The Frankenstein story takes a totally different turn in Neal Shusterman’s UnWholly, due out later this month. And these days many zombie books start with some kind of virus or plague, with the search for a cure a significant storyline.

Another trend in publishing and reading that is affecting horror fiction is the popularity of ebooks and self-publishing. At the time that we started MonsterLibrarian.com, horror fiction had more or less lost its home in mainstream publishing and migrated to small presses that often specialized in printing collector’s editions—beautiful, but expensive, and not easily available to the average consumer. Some of them, like Cemetery Dance and Bad Moon Books have done very well, but many times books from small presses are only available by direct order, which makes them hard to find.

As ebooks and self-publishing have exploded, horror fiction of all kinds has become much more readily available. Short pieces that weren’t exactly what a publisher was looking for, or were by unknown authors, could be (and are) presented in ebook format, and find an audience. This is great for horror readers who are loyal to a subgenre that isn’t being promoted in mainstream publishing , like werewolf fiction. There is a strong minority of readers who love werewolf horror (enough that we hosted a Werewolf Month for several years), but there are few current werewolf horror books (here’s our list of werewolf titles). A search for “werewolf horror” on Amazon.com brings up over 1,000 titles, mostly self-published ebooks. It’s hard to know what the quality of a self-published book will be before you read it, but many ebooks are very low-priced. Some authors are now publishing serials, with an attempt to hook an audience with episodes of a continuing story. Authors whose rights have reverted to them can introduce their books to a new audience. Small presses sell books in ebook format as well as collector’s editions, making those available to a wider audience. And current mainstream authors (like Stephen King) are finding a demand for shorter pieces . The ways that ebooks are changing publishing in general and horror in particular are many, and it’s very exciting. Unfortunately for libraries and their readers, most of these won’t be easily available through a service like Overdrive. The conundrum of how libraries can help horror readers connect more easily with ebooks doesn’t seem like one that can be solved easily.

A final trend that I see affecting the way people experience horror fiction is the way it is sweeping the media. Television shows like The Walking Dead (originally based on a series of graphic novels) have made zombies more mainstream. Movies such as Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods draw in reluctant viewers (see what blogger Barbara Vey wrote here). Apps allow you to take the experience along with you. The brand-new book Horrible Hauntings by Shirin Yim Bridges uses augmented reality technology to extend the reading experience; ghosts leap out at the reader when you point your cell phone camera at the pictures! Horror is such a visual genre that the way other media are giving readers to experience it is nothing short of amazing.

Getting the horror reader in the door can be a challenge. But the real challenge is this: with so much horror outside mainstream publishing, once you get the reader in the door, how are you going to manage to give them what they’re looking for?

Posted on October 7, 2012 by , Reply