On a dark, snowy night at the shit factory, where production halted due to hazardous road conditions, I was alone. Just me, my thoughts, and a 14-hour recording of VC Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic, as read by Mena Suvari.
I never read the 1979 novel but like everyone else on this planet, I knew its reputation. I saw the 1987 film adaptation when I was five or so and remember being haunted by a dead, dangling bride followed by a kids walking off into a green and spacious horizon at the end. That was all I knew. Given its popularity with young women and teenagers, I was honestly expecting a cheap, trashy listen that might spark my imagination in a perverse yet innocuous way.
What I got instead was a late night religious-like experience rivaled only by that time I watched The Deer Hunter when I was 11. I was so impacted by this story that I began to question if I was listening to the same book that everyone else read. Of course it was a story about four, later three, children hidden away in a mansion for nearly three and a half years before escaping, but what got everyone talking about this book is, well, to put it bluntly…the older brother and sister, Cathy and Chris, fucking. Sexual tension between the two is blatant throughout the story, but when this tension is finally consummated, the incident is brief and regretted. What grabbed me instead was the story about the two younger twins, Carrie and Cory.
From their perspective, this is a horror story. At the novel’s conclusion, they would have spent just under half their lives in that attic and bedroom. Their father dies, mother neglects them, they become malnourished, caged up, and are cared for by two ill equipped teenagers. There’s no happy ending for them; Cory dies, buried in an unknown grave, and Carrie is heartbroken, seemingly missing her other half.
I don’t think I ever felt more shattered while hearing a story. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shed a tear when news about Cory’s death is given to his surviving siblings. Another gut punching moment is when Cathy compares the physical changes of her and Chris to the young twins: despite being imprisoned against their will for over three years, Carrie and Cory only grew two inches. In short, half of innocent Cory’s life was a miserable, dreary existence.
That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night.
While the book was massively popular, from my understanding, critical reception was mixed. Many felt that the story commanded the reader’s attention, but the running theme of incest seemed a bit too scandalous. But that would be a shame if that was the only takeaway. There’s A LOT of other things going on here: themes of naivety, of god, of death, of greed, of losing one’s innocence.
Is Flowers in the Attic perfect? Not exactly. Some complain about Cathy’s sometimes romantic notions that color the book. I wasn’t particularly taken with her brief interaction with Bart Winslow. Now I wouldn’t say that Cathy is an unreliable narrator in this story but I do think her trauma should be taken in consideration. Her formative years were stolen from her, after all. With that in mind, I think her perspective hammers home the theme of innocence lost. As a notorious Cormac McCarthy fan, I was kinda taken by her point of view: despite the absolute tragedy of the situation, an ounce of humanity and kindness can still be found.
I also learned that Wes Craven wrote a screenplay and wanted to direct a film adaptation to the novel. I find this interesting because it makes me wonder if this would have colored our perception of Flowers in the Attic. I’m not a Craven-head, nor have I read the screenplay, but I can’t help but wonder. I also can’t help but make my own changes to the book. It was clear (at least in my version of the novel) that Andrews was writing a sequel, so the audience was deprived of a satisfactory showdown between the kids and their captors. Truth be told, I was fine with this. Had I wrote the book, the house would have taken on an almost haunted nature and the mother and grandmother would have been left there, abandoned, much as they had abandoned their children.
But this is VC Andrews’ book. Not Beau Montana’s.
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