Parenting

Flowers in the Attic Book Club Week 1

edited December 2014 in Parenting
Omg...What did everyone think? The grandmother still scares the shit out of me. 

Eta: This is for chapters 1 through 5.
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Re: Flowers in the Attic Book Club Week 1

  • Can i be in the club even if I haven't recently read it but have read it in the last year?  I am currently reading the NEW series based on the FITA which is all about Christopher's Diary so it relives a lot of the original book.


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  • credcat7 said:
    Can i be in the club even if I haven't recently read it but have read it in the last year?  I am currently reading the NEW series based on the FITA which is all about Christopher's Diary so it relives a lot of the original book.


    Sure. We've read up to chapter five as a group. That's right after they've arrived at the mansion and the grandmother beat the twins and forced Corrine to show everyone where she was whipped.
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  • guiltypleasures I got sucked in and read the whole book, but I will stay in the first 5 chapters like we are supposed to this week. 

    The grandma is scary, she is a piece of work! 



  • Lalalal. Haven't started yet. I have it on hold at the library. I'll be home to get it on Friday.
    I just found the audiobook on youtube.
  • guiltypleasures I got sucked in and read the whole book, but I will stay in the first 5 chapters like we are supposed to this week. 

    The grandma is scary, she is a piece of work! 


    Isn't she?!!! Her list of rules was insane. I did have to laugh at the whole stare at the bible thing. How much goodness does she think someone can absorb from staring?
    Clearly enough not to be Devil's issue :( It made me so sad when she did that to the twins, I almost cried. The are babies. Not that anything else she does is less terrible but that part just really was a bit much for me. 
  • Cambury108. She could have found another way if she was resourceful enough. It was never about providing for the children. It was always about her own selflessness and vanity. I don't think that she knew how to be anything but selfish and vain though.
    I have a good grasp on her I think now since I am so far but I will say in the beginning of the book I liked her, except for the dragging her kids off part. I felt like she was a good mother, like she was trying her best. My opinion changed later on. 

    I wonder what she had to do with that father to get back in his good graces, while the book never said I did get the feeling it might have been something sexual between her and the father. The mothers cold and hateful ways toward her just were the icing on the top of that feeling for me. I am amazed at how cold that grandmother is to everyone. 
  • I want to know after reading her list of rules, how she bathed herself, took care of her monthly woman issues and changed her underwear along with having 3 children of her own. GOD forbid you have to touch/look at yourself. 
  • I will be reading tonight. I knew I should have started last night.


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  • I can't believe it's already the 29th and I didn't read the chapters. I will read tonight and contribute afterwards.
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  • I also felt like Corinne was all about appearances, and when she was unable to keep up her facade, she took the only way out, Eben if it meant raking her children to love where she herself had been miserable. The grandmother is a bitch, period.

    I also read the entire book, and then kind of wished I hadn't, and then wanted to read the other books in the series.

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  • I don't think that Corrine understood love at all. That's not surprising considering her background though. She knew what it was like to be respected and worshiped but it seems like love was always beyond her grasp. I do think that she cared for her children but not as much as she cared for herself. It was more keeping up their picture perfect lifestyle than being a dedicated or attentive mother. She always felt kind of distant even before the father died.

     
    While I do agree with what you say here about the picture perfect life I have to disagree at least in the part that I do think she loved her husband. I do think she loved her children. I think when her husband died and the picture fell apart she also in a sense fell apart and couldn't handle it any more. Clearly in the end greed/selfishness won out over loving her children but in the beginning I didn't get that sense. 

    I do think the father loved the children more than Corrine I will say that. Coming from the mother that Corrine came from I thought she did a good job at "loving" up until about the middle of the book and then I changed my views on her. But I am staying in the first 5 chapters here. 
  • Audiobooks for the whole series are available  on youtube. Just search the title and it'll come up.
  • I also felt like Corinne was all about appearances, and when she was unable to keep up her facade, she took the only way out, Eben if it meant raking her children to love where she herself had been miserable. The grandmother is a bitch, period. I also read the entire book, and then kind of wished I hadn't, and then wanted to read the other books in the series.
    I read the whole book because work was dead for like two straight days and I couldn't stop reading because well the content, I am almost thru with the 2nd book and its really messed up. I am glad I am reading it but the stuff that happens just makes me SO sad for those kids. 
  • I feel like Corrine loved being loved and adored by her husband, I'm not convinced she loved him. She loved the attention, and being an object of desire. Granted, we're getting Cathy's perspective, but I think Corrine is jealous of her daughter, and her relationship with her father. I think the only other option she had, other than going to her parents' , would be remarriage. I think her financial situation was dire enough that she didn't have time to get a new husband.
    The apple and the tree ya know. Sad. I can see it though. I guess I just want to believe she was a good mother because I don't want to look at it bleakly. Clearly I am in the minority of her character in the first five chapters but that is OK ;)
  • Just started reading yesterday and hope to be caught up by tomorrow!
  • guiltypleasures I will agree with what you said above. I do blame her parents for much of her character. 
  • I almost wish instead of her taking those kids to her parents home she would have just took them to an orphanage. She could have just walked away from them and went onward to her parents alone. I don't understand her motive for keeping them but yet keeping them locked up. Its all just sad when you really think about it. 
  • CeeBug said:
    I agree that Corinne sounds like she was jealous of her daughter. She was raised to be a pretty trophy - first as her dad's and then later as her husband's. Cathy was another girl who took his attention away from her.

    I felt like Christopher and Cathy's language seemed adult like. I wonder if the author did that to demostrate the childhood that the children lost.
    I would say yes on this. 
  • @CeeBug I think she gravitated towards him because of the prison she lived in and she saw him as a way OUT of that as a young girl. (this might be past chapter 5 but I can't remember sorry if it is)
  • Did anyone else just not really like it so far?

    I thought it was super badly written, which I can like in a book (I like to read trashy romances!) but I felt like the author wanted us to take her sooooooo seriously and I just couldn't do it.
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  • The switching back and forth between a very a adult voice and something almost childlike is really distracting. For me it emphasizes the fact that Cathy always had to be a little more adult than she wanted or was ready to be. That's something I see a lot through out the book. Cathy has to take on a more adult role. She's always had to be more mature than she should have been even before her father died.

  • bay511 said:

    Just because one has been forced into a role with responsibilities does not mean one is ready, that's for damn sure.

    It's almost like being two people in my experience. Responsible almost adult, and childlike regressed person.

    If that makes sense at all.

    Yes! That's how I felt too. I always had to be more responsible than I should have been. It's hard having to be mature and responsible when you're not developed enough to handle those things. I know that sometimes I act a bit childish now because I never got to do it then.
  • bay511 said:

    Just because one has been forced into a role with responsibilities does not mean one is ready, that's for damn sure.

    It's almost like being two people in my experience. Responsible almost adult, and childlike regressed person.

    If that makes sense at all.

    Yes! That's how I felt too. I always had to be more responsible than I should have been. It's hard having to be mature and responsible when you're not developed enough to handle those things. I know that sometimes I act a bit childish now because I never got to do it then.
    +1
  • So I've only read up to chapter 5, and so far I'm feeling so much pain for these poor children who were ripped so heartlessly from everything they knew RIGHT AFTER having their loving and doting father ripped so quickly from their lives. The speed with which he died and they needed to pack up and leave would have made me nothing but numb.

    I think the mother acted out of fear in running back to her parents. Maybe she didn't have "skills" as she said like typewriting or whatever, but she certainly knew how to manage children and a home- I feel like she could have done something more there, like being a possible nanny or something along those lines to maintain her children's lives.

    And I'm really hoping she was trying to protect her kids by saying it wouldn't take her more than a week to win back her father's good graces because COME ON. No one could be that astute- your father disowned you when you ran off to marry your half-uncle. Now you want him to take you and your "devil" children in and just forget about the past because it's convenient for you? Ok lady.
  • Yeah I found Corinne really exasperating as a character. Self-centered to the point of blindness.
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  • CeeBug said:
    The part that I have been thinking about this morning is the description that Cathy gave of her mother's friends and relatives after her dad died. She described all of the food and support that they gave. Why did Corinne not rely on friends to help her provide for her children? Why run away and hope that someone else would take care of them financially knowing what environment she was sending her children into? She said herself that children need a place to run.

    Her selfishness and delusional ideas are ridiculous.
    I have often had the same thought about the friends/neighbors. The kids were stars of the neighborhood it seemed. I doubt that the friends/neighbors would have let the children go into poverty. Their mother could have went of and done whatever and left those children with one of them. I am almost positive someone would have stepped up if asked. 


  • mcbenny said:
    CeeBug said:
    The part that I have been thinking about this morning is the description that Cathy gave of her mother's friends and relatives after her dad died. She described all of the food and support that they gave. Why did Corinne not rely on friends to help her provide for her children? Why run away and hope that someone else would take care of them financially knowing what environment she was sending her children into? She said herself that children need a place to run.

    Her selfishness and delusional ideas are ridiculous.
    I have often had the same thought about the friends/neighbors. The kids were stars of the neighborhood it seemed. I doubt that the friends/neighbors would have let the children go into poverty. Their mother could have went of and done whatever and left those children with one of them. I am almost positive someone would have stepped up if asked. 


    But she wanted to be rich!
    She could have went to her parents still without the kids. I think she truly knew deep down her parents were not going to accept those children. She could have spared them. I mean I understand obviously then there would be no book so its a moot point. :)
  • Corrine wouldn't have went to her friends because she still needed to keep up her image.
  • Corrine wouldn't have went to her friends because she still needed to keep up her image.

    They also would have taken care of the kids but not her. They would have helped for a little while but nobody would have been able to keep up her standard of living.
  • I finally read the five chapters. I haven't read the book since I was a young teenager, so it's definitely a different point of view.

    As a mother, I'd never put my children in that kind of situation. So, I feel like Corrine's motivation must be greed.


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  • When is book club again and for what chapters? I am already thru the book but I want to discuss further and can't hardly wait! Thanks!
  • The next discussion is on the 5th. We'll be talking about chapters 6-10.
  • guiltypleasures Thanks! 

    I am kicking myself for reading ahead, I knew it was a bad idea but I couldn't help myself LOL. I am already on the 3rd book of the series. 

    Can't wait for Monday though! 
  • guiltypleasures Thanks! 

    I am kicking myself for reading ahead, I knew it was a bad idea but I couldn't help myself LOL. I am already on the 3rd book of the series. 

    Can't wait for Monday though! 
    I'm really glad that you like it so much! Her books are addicting. Have you seen the family tree for that series? It really is a tangled web. I'm rereading My Sweet Audrina right now. After that I'll read more of the series.
  • guiltypleasures I am a really fast reader for 1 so that kind of sucks in "book club" form. I have never done one before. 

    I had to keep reading the series to find out what happened to those kids. It makes me sad to see how detrimental it really was. 

    I don't think I have ever read a book by her before these so I am interested in other things she has written to read after I finish this book I am on and I want to say there is 1 more but I am not sure if its out yet or not. 
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