Flowers in the Attic

I read this book in high school and it messed. Me. Up. So much so that I remember it in vivid detail to this day and credit it with my desire to write dysfunctional family fiction.

I’d be hard-pressed in real life (thank God) to find a family suffering from issues ranging from incestuous relationships through moral superiority and unforgiving rigidity up to greed and murder… all of which feels like the tip of the iceberg.

Reading the tale of a family who has gone so far off the rails will, if nothing else, make you appreciate the mundane… show more.

In my school, a dog-eared copy of the completely messed-up and horrifying Flowers In The Attic was passed around as contraband. We were not allowed to read it, which, of course, added to the appeal.

Many people find the character of “the grandmother” of the kids locked up in the attic pretty terrifying. But for me, Corinne, their weak and stupid mother, is the true villain of the story.

The slow betrayal she indulges in, as her children lose out to her desire for social acceptance and the high life is utterly heartbreaking.

If you like a very sick story… show more.

The maternal figures in this story rival Hansel and Gretel’s witch.

When Corrine Dollanganger’s husband dies in an accident, she returns to the familial home in the hopes of willing back her father’s affection and her inheritance.

Corrine’s father disapproved of what he considered an incestuous marriage and so she conspires with her mother to hide the existence of her four children by locking them away in the attic.

It’s supposed to be a short-term solution until her elderly father dies, but the children discover their mother and grandmother might never plan on letting them out.

This is a book about a mother who hides her children away from her new husband so that she can win an inheritance.

I read the book when I was at an age I believed all mothers loved their children selflessly so the story of a mother betraying her children traumatised me. I sobbed my way through it and recall my younger brother asking me why I just didn’t put the book down if it was making me so sad. It was a question to which to date I have no answer.  Although it was fiction because of the way… show more.