(1924-1986)
The Emily Bronte of the MTV generation, V. C. Andrews has attracted a devoted and usually young following for her strange, perverse stories of madness, revenge, horror, family curses, and eternal love. Flowers in the Attic, Andrews’s first published novel, appeared in 1979, and became almost an instant cult classic, casting a spell on countless readers who were both fascinated and appalled. The topic read like a cross between a Grimm fairy tale and an episode of The Jerry Springer Show, had such a forum for the grotesque love affair and dysfunctional family existed then. The novel concerns the tragic and sociopathic Dollanganger family. A widowed mother with her four young children in tow is forced to return to Foxworth Hall, the grand manor house of her wealthy parents. Obeying the irrefutable logic of the Gothic tradition, the widow and her own horrid mother conspire to lock the kids away in the attic to keep their vicious grandfather from knowing of their existence (and so the mother will not be cut off from her father’s money). The greed and inherited psychosis of the kids’ mother turns their temporary imprisonment into a permanent condition as she comes to enjoy her pampered existence. Years of abuse and neglect follow, times of horror, fear, death, and a sexual coming of age that results in a loving—yet damning—act of incest.
No great literary stylist, and with a story line that left some critics repulsed or contemptuous, Andrews nevertheless connected deeply with millions. To the susceptible, Andrews had endowed her cruel nightmare with an emotional force that haunted many readers. Flowers in the Attic and the sequels that followed found their largest audience among young teens. Like Stephen King, Andrews was an adult whose fears and fantasies made a particularly direct connection with the adolescent mind.
Five volumes comprised the Dollanganger sequel, including the prequel, Garden of Shadows, which explained the peculiar events that led to the ugly familial relationships in Flowers in the Attic. All of the author’s work played on similar motifs or recurring obsessions: family, disintegration, incest, promiscuity, greed. Andrews published seven novels in all, and had written notes and outlines for many more when she died. Not many people had been aware that V. C. was a woman, Virginia Cleo, nor that she had had a life of tragedy and confinement that echoed some of the drama of her characters. Andrews suffered a fall as a 15-year-old girl and remained on crutches or in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She lost her father when she was 20, lived with her mother, and never married. Writing for many years without success, she had piled up a large number of rejected manuscripts before Flowers in the Attic was accepted for publication.
Andrews died of cancer in 1986, a brief seven years after she became a published and popular author. With such a rabid fan base for the deceased, family members worked with her developers to continue producing fiction under the V. C. Andrews name. A hired hand, Andrew Neiderman, was assigned the task of writing new novels that captured the gothic modern romanticism and shocking melodrama of the originals. The new topics sold well, but the hardcore Andrews devotees tended to deride the work of the person they referred to as “the Ghost Writer.” These readers felt that Nieder-man could emulate Andrews’s style and shocking plots but not her soul, the peculiar vulnerability, empathy, and dread that touched so many fans. Andrews herself, in a rare public statement, spoke to the strangely satisfying and uplifting effect her topics and characters had on many readers: “[The characters] are wounded, but live to struggle on, and before my topic is over, they have suffered perhaps, grown, become stronger undoubtedly, and have learned to cope, no matter what the circumstances.”
Works
- Dark Angel (1986);
- Dawn (1990);
- Flowers in the Attic (1979);
- Gates of Paradise (1989);
- Heaven (1985);
- Hidden Jewel (1995);
- If There Be Thorns (1981);
- My Sweet Aud-rina (1982);
- Petals on the Wind (1980);
- Seeds of Yesterday (1984);
- Web of Dreams (1990)
Ghost written by Andrew Neiderman:
- All that Glitters (1995);
- Brooke (1998);
- Butterfly (1998);
- Cat (1999);
- Crystal (1998);
- Darkest House (1993);
- End of the Rainbow (2001);
- Eye of the Storm (2000);
- Fallen Hearts (1988);
- Garden of Shadows (1987);
- Heart Song (1997);
- Jade (1999);
- Lightning Strikes (2000);
- Melody (1996);
- Midnight Whispers (1992);
- Misty (1999);
- Music in the Night (1998);
- Olivia (1999);
- Pearl in the Mist (1994);
- Rain (2000);
- Raven (2000);
- Ruby (1994);
- Runaways (1998);
- Secrets of the Morning (1991);
- Star (1999);
- Tarnished Gold (1996);
- Twilight’s Child (1992);
- Unfinished Symphony (1997)
