Book Review: The Flower in our Attic

You should read this, Honey, it was my favorite book when I was your age”, my mother told me, as I was dying of boredom in early July. She gave me an old copy of a novel. “Fleurs captives” (“Flowers in the Attic”, editor’s note); “Nice title”, I thought. The pages turned yellow with time, and the cover was faded and partially ripped off. On the first blank page, I could clearly read “C. Marsin”, above the name of my mother’s best friend written in blue. It had that particular smell of an old book that had been forgotten for years in a box. This novel was the flower in our attic. There was something comforting and moving about this book. After reading the summary, I couldn't put this book down. Virginia C. Andrews kept me up all my summer nights.

AN INITIATORY JOURNEY "Flowers in the Attic" is a story of pain and tragedy. The Dollanganger family lives a happy life in Pennsylvania until the father, Christopher, dies in a car accident. Life will never be the same after his death. The children; Chris, Cathy, Carrie and Cory have only one solution to survive: sacrifice their freedom in their grandparents' attic. "Just for a few weeks...", said their mother Corinne. Behind a horrible family secret, their only dream is to escape the attic and smell the perfume of real flowers.

The novel deals with many taboos, such as sexuality, child abuse and incest, which is why it was banned from school libraries for years. According to publisher Ann Patty, "Flowers in the Attic" may be partially based on a true story. This background makes the novel even more moving.

This was the first novel I read as a teenager. I was about 15 years old when I read "Flowers in the Attic", and it was hard to find a novel in which I could identify with the main character at the time. The protagonist, Cathy, is a 12-year-old girl at the beginning of the novel. By the end, she is 17. As I read this novel each summer, I was happy that I could grow up with Cathy. I could share her feelings. I could understand the character even better as we grew up together.

GROWTH & EXPERIENCE The novels of Virginia C. Andrews evoke the theme of growth with these references to flowers in their titles: "Flowers in the Attic", "Petals on the wind", "If There Be Thorns", "Garden of Shadows" and "Seeds of Yesterday". The author shows an interesting way to experience the world. One can grow from pain. There is no light without shadow. This emphasis on tragedy is important to understand joy. The characters must experience pain in order to consider healing.

It’s not only a fiction. This story is inherently addressing real issues. This book, published in 1979, smells like literary revolution. It’s realistic but still, it’s an overwhelming horror story. We enter the intimacy of a family that hides dark and complex secrets. All this complexity gives a constant tension to the story. We never know what plot twist the reader will encounter on the next page. Finally, it becomes addictive. The Washington Post described Andrews' work as "deranged swill" that "may well be the worst book ever read". At Time Oddity, we consider it as a timeless masterpiece. As a reader, I found in this novel the comfort I had always sought in a generation that was not my own. Virginia took me by the hand and showed me that thorns, just like roses, are part of the garden. I will recommend this book to my own daughter, hoping that she will also see this novel as a life lesson, or as a garden full of thorns and flowers.