Reply to s/o inappropriate books you read as a child

Forum Index » The DCUM Book Club

Reply to "s/o inappropriate books you read as a child"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I haven't thought about VC Andrews in years.  I remember Flowers in the Attic from my childhood but nothing about it.

Worth re-reading?  I'm sort of curious to after all this discussion.[/quote]

I recently heard it described as YA. That can't be right? But we all read it at like 12, apparently?[/quote]

It has adult themes, for sure.[b] But can you imagine a 40 year old reading it[/b]?[/quote]

DP here, but I reread it recently.  It really hit differently than it did when I was 11 or 12.  Back then, the focus was on the relationship between Cathy/Chris and between Corrine/Christopher: the book made them seem both disturbing and...somehow romantic, in a way that disturbed me because I knew I wasn't supposed to feel that way, and just the reading-about-sex aspect.  But as an adult and a mother, what made it most disturbing was the stunted, childlike language of the narrator, which drove home just how much damage the years in the attic had on her, even as an adult, as if her mind was affected somehow.  Also, I don't remember feeling the claustrophobic element as a child reading the book, again because 11 year old me was focused on the shock/novelty of reading about sex/incest/forbidden relationships, but the idea of the children being locked in one bedroom and one hot Virginia attic in the summer disturbed me now, as well as the understanding of the ages/stages of development of the children and what this imprisonment was doing to them mentally and physically.

Try it again as a 40 year old mom.  It's still horrifying, but in a different way.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics