For centuries now, nothing has drawn as much immediate attention as the phrase "based on a true story," especially in the case of crime stories. There is a morbid fascination that most humans have to see the very worst of society and revel in moral superiority, feeling not only shock that something can happen, but that it did. How could this happen in a just world? For V.C. Andrews, her ability to turn the story of The Dollangangers into page-turning fodder is an achievement unto itself. "Flowers in the Attic" is a tale full of sick taboos alongside a family so dysfunctional that one can't help but be relieved that their absent parent hasn't bothered them in years. It's a story that exploits psychological abuse in ways that play into every reader's vulnerable need for sympathy, a need to find a light at the end of a very dark, messed up tunnel. What Andrews creates may be nothing more than a pulpy novel with some unbelievable imagery, but it's still one of the most impressive feats of its kind.
A story like this cannot start with a total whirlwind of chaos. As Andrews knows personally, there is a need to drop breadcrumbs, allowing every new development to feel rational. It's what makes the final story feel justified, of several children locked in an attic solely so that an abusive mother can get an inheritance. It starts simply enough, with a death in the family that served as their financial stability, and only builds from there. Even before anything radical happens, The Dollangangers already are written with this curious sense of disconnect. The mother doesn't seem emotionally stable, constantly needing validation for her looks, even having a family that she tries to make look like a Norman Rockwell painting. Every small aside where she rejects her children's needs isn't seen as an issue, but when collected reflects how minor grievances ultimately build to something insidious.
By the time that the children are thrown into the attic, the audience is prone to have a suspicion of the parental figures. The mother distrusts her parents and the grandparents hate the children due to grotesque reasoning. Everything is laid out in ways that Andrews treat as mundane at first, like an itch on a palm. A simple scratch satisfies, but it doesn't go away for long. The need to be stable slowly fades and soon the skin turns red, eventually peeling off to the raw core. It's gross, but there's the fascination with what this monstrous sight is like. It's not every day that one is welcomed by a sight so awful that they want to take in the sight, doing everything they can to remember what it was like.
This is made more interesting because Andrews is interested in viewing this disturbing tale from the perspective of teenagers, themselves on the cusp of puberty. Without parents to guide them through hormonal changes, they take on the role of adulthood in gross and dark ways, using it more in a survivalist way instead of affectionate or ultimately resourceful. They resort to ideas that on paper are uncomfortable but again are elevated ever so gradually that they seem rational. Even then, Andrews is sadistic, finding the emotional sympathy for the protagonist correlating to these actions and not allowing anyone to be truly happy. In more ways than one, the kids are stuck in a proverbial prison, unable to escape. The younger ones have aged without proper nutrition. To imagine it is stomach-churning. To think of it is even more assaultive, as Andrews only alludes to certain developmental conflicts in detail. It's up to the audience to fully understand the tragedies of this narrative.
Because of when it was released, it could also be read as a story of how capitalism and conservative values doesn't necessarily cater to compassion. While The Dollangangers aren't holier than thou, there is reason to suggest that the kids could be redeemed, that the sins of the parents shouldn't be on the children. Instead, things go from worse to worst and suddenly the quest to make some quick money is met with two generations of emotional ruin. Each reveal is appalling, and the only thing grounding it is how Andrews knows how to keep the ickiness from ever playing too much against audience anticipations. Because this is focused on teenagers who don't know any better, who haven't had the proper childhood that they should've, certain things feel less like book-dropping moments than should. By the end, the world is so confusing and messed up that it's amazing how easy it is to piece everything back to the simple beginning, where a minor grievance resulted in death and misery.
There's more to the saga and it's likely that Andrews eventually fell too much into novelty. For the time being, "Flowers in the Attic" is the perfect kind of exploitative fiction that knows how to revel in awfulness without making the reader feel total guilt. With enough twists to keep the audience perplexed, the novel makes the most of its limited setting, allowing it to feel like a haunting coming of age story, almost satirical to what the feel-good tales other authors prefer. The way that the book ends with one victory but doesn't qualify as a totally satisfying conclusion is a powerful highwire act. Andrews knows that so long as the characters are in survival mode, everyone will pay attention. It's trashy, repulsive, and even awful at times but it's also one of those morbid reads that sticks with the reader, asking just how far is too far. Even then, there will always be the wonder of how much further things will go after that.
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