Flowers in the Attic
1979
- gothic fiction
- psychological thriller
- coming of age
- classics
- series:dollanganger
- doughnuts
- incest
- psychological fiction
- fiction
- abused children
The story
Flowers in the Attic is a 1979 Gothic novel by V. C. Andrews. It is the first book in the Dollanganger Series. The novel is written in the first-person, from the point of view of Cathy Dollanganger. In 1993, Flowers in the Attic was awarded the Secondary BILBY Award. In 2003 the book was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's 200 "best-loved novels." ---------- Also contained in: [Flowers in the Attic / Petals on the Wind](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16524231W)
What it’s like
Claustrophobic and feverish, told in a breathless first-person voice that swings between childlike wonder and adult dread. The atmosphere is that of a sealed, sunless upper room in a grand, decaying house: stale air, dust in slanted light through a shuttered window, dim lamps, and a looming estate full of shadowed corridors and locked doors. Descriptions of the attic's fading sweetness and the gardens outside lend it a lush, gothic texture, while the prose stays brisk and propulsive, pulling the reader forward chapter after chapter. The vibe is gothic melancholy with a suffocating undertow, best suited to a late-night read alone with the lamp on, or a bleak rainy afternoon when you want to be fully absorbed. Intensity is heavy: sustained emotional cruelty and confinement, physical abuse of children, and sexual content between siblings that is disturbing and unsettling rather than explicit, with dread running throughout. Not gentle. It fits readers who enjoy dark family sagas, Gothic classics with a sense of menace, and stories of resilient young people surviving a poisonous home.
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