Long before Twilight, it was a rite of passage for young women to read and shriek over passages of Flowers that would probably be considered lurid by the most liberal grown-up standards. Nostalgia Demographic: Times have changed, but young adult novels used to be glorified smut written by middle-aged lunatics with complicated relationships with Jesus. (They are being written by a ghostwriter. The romper-rippers published after Flowers - and there have been scores - were popular enough that they are still being written, even though Cleo “V.C.” Andrews died in 1986. It was adapted for the screen in 1987 in a film that glossed over the incest part, which is sort of like making Jurassic Park into a film about a friendly lizard named Butternut. It was this gothic Sally Jesse nonsense that made the first installment of “The Dollanganger” saga both hugely controversial and wildly popular Lady Chattlerly’s Brother, if you will.

Locked away with nothing but some old books and their raging hormones, Cathy and her brother, Chris, fall in love. After the death of Cathy’s father, her destitute mother Corrine is forced to move them back home with her wealthy parents, sex-obsessed Evangelical loons who lock Cathy and her three siblings in an attic, so that Corrine can pretend to be young and childless and land a rich second husband. Flowers is narrated by an adolescent girl named Cathy Dollanganger. Andrews’s minor classic of sibling ribaldry was published in 1979, sold millions of copies, spawned endless series of sex-filled “family sagas,” and turned Andrews into a staple of teen girls’ furtive hiding places. Andrews’s teen-incest classic Flowers in the Attic.īackground: V.C.

Now, years later, we will take a look at these classics in a more objective, unforgiving adult light: Are they really the best ever? How do they hold up now? We’ve already reconsidered a number of once-beloved entertainments. The Nostalgia Fact-Check is a recurring Vulture feature in which we revisit a seminal movie, TV show, or album that reflexively evinces an “Oh my God, that was the best ever!” response by a certain demographic, owing to it having been imprinted on them early.

Vc andrews flowers in the attic prequel