Booklist Review
If you bring up V. C. Andrews to just about any woman who came of age in the 1970s and '80s, it's very likely that she'll squeal and tell how the books were passed around at slumber parties or procured from the cool older girls at school. The first two books in Andrews' Dollanganger series Flowers in the Attic (1979)and Petals on the Wind (1980) have been reissued yet again, timed to the release of movie versions on the Lifetime network. Though the reissued versions are missing the iconic black covers with the peek-a-boo frames, the titillating stories inside remain the same and, in their way, have aged remarkably well. The Dollanganger series follows four siblings teenagers Christopher and Cathy and four-year-old twins Cory and Carrie from their wretched childhoods all the way through their lives, mainly focusing on how Chris and Cathy try to break free from their dysfunctional and haunted past. (A prequel published six years after the initial success of Flowers in the Attic goes back a generation and sheds a very different light on some of the characters and events from throughout the rest of the series.) Flowers in the Attic begins with the tragic death of the siblings' father, which forces their mother, Corrine, to go back to her family estate to seek literal and financial shelter. We find out that Grandmother Olivia banished Corrine and her husband because the pair first cousins never should have married. Olivia has also kept the existence of the children a secret from everyone, including the grandfather, who is on his deathbed. Olivia, a religious fanatic, cannot contain her disdain for her daughter and her disgust at her grandchildren, yet she begrudgingly allows them to stay at the palatial Foxworth Hall only the children have to live in the attic, hidden from the rest of the world. Corrine reassures them that it's only for a few days, until she can win over her father. A few days turns into weeks, and Corrine reluctantly tells the children that their grandfather would never accept them but no worries, he's due to die any day! As the children adapt to their strange new lives, three years pass. It comes as no surprise that Chris and Cathy fall in love after all, they are teenagers, with no one else to turn to. Olivia becomes more and more unstable and cruel, while Corrine is distant and absent for longer and longer periods of time. When the older siblings discover their mother has remarried they'd had no clue they realize they aren't ever getting out of the attic and are determined to escape. What's the appeal of this series? The characters verge on cartoonish, and the dialogue makes your average soap opera look like Shakespeare, yet the story has held readers captive for more than 30 years. It's a fairy tale a dark, twisted fairy tale of children locked away from the world, only to escape and discover that maybe the real world isn't a great place to be after all. Andrews knew how to spin a heck of an escapist yarn with all the right elements: sex, religion, family, secrets, and lies. Who could ask for more?--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2010 Booklist