What The Butler Saw

Last week, while visiting my parents, I found my old copy of Virginia Andrews' Flowers in the Attic and reread it for the first time since my original Andrews marathon at the age of 12-13. I realised VA really is a very strange phenomenon.

If you ask a man if they have heard of this writer, they will probably say no. The books, technically written for adults, are in fact the sole preserve of adolescent teenage girls (and of grown women who haven't quite grown up and still like to induge teen fantasies of beautiful, innocent 13-year-old heroines, vast wealth, precious ballgowns and men in tuxedos).

I first heard of the VA sagas when, age 12 and in my second year at secondary school, I saw a much-thumbed copy of the classic VA, Heaven, in the desk of the wildest girl in the class. (I knew she was wild because she'd had boys visit her in her bedroom at home.)

The book was passed around the class and we devoured the bizarre story of the young heroine Heaven Leigh, who grows up the most poor and beautiful girl in the Kentucky mountains, and gets sold by her father, before finding out she is descended from a vastly wealthy family, setting the stage for a 5-book saga of family secrets and lies.

Soon I was reading the final installment, the prequel Web of Dreams, in which tour de force Heaven Leigh's descendent discovers Heaven's mother's story of why she ran away from her luxurious mansion home.

I'll never forget reading that book at just that age. VA, for all her vulgarity and trashiness, had a special ability to tap into the 12-year-old female heart.

After reading the Heaven series, I ended up devouring VA's Dollenganger series (which starts with Flowers in the Attic and ends with prequel Garden of Shadows) and the standalone My Sweet Audrina. I was so entranced that I drew family trees of the characters in my diary. Years later, at Cambridge, I dipped into the ghostwriter 'The New Virginia Andrews', in between Coleridge and Swift. The 'new' ghostwritten books were entertaining, but a pale imitation of the real thing.

But on rereading Flowers in the Attic as an adult for the first time last week, I realised there really is something odd about these books. Basically, they're mainly about incestuous love! I don't really know how VA got away with romanticising such a massive taboo: her books are bestsellers all over the world.

I've also discovered there is a huge web community of VA fans who are frighteningly knowledgeable about her work and even role-play the plots of her novels online to strict timetables (like, 'Joanne, you're playing Tony Tatterton, so you need to be online at 7pm EST on Sunday!')

As young teenagers, it was the fantasy of being unspeakably wealthy, beautiful, virtuous and glamorous that my friends and I loved about VA's heroines. I'm still fascinated today by 13-year-old girls, as they always seem so romantic and full of potential, as I once felt.

I feel naughty even writing about VA, because she's such a trashy writer and the kind of person one doesn't like to admit to liking, but I think I'll always be a fan.