
The story of the achingly tragic Dollanganger children. Locked in the attic by their cruel grandmother, with little fresh air or sunlight, they are underfed and all but forgotten. What’s a teenage brother and sister to do, then, when their bodies begin to change, when they feel URGES, when they feel DESIRE… for one another? The book that was passed around my middle school lunch room, that had us all GASPING at the doomed (and rapey) love affair between siblings Cathy and Chris, is 40 years old this week. If you’ve never read this tawdry cult classic written by VC Andrews, pick up a copy now. It’s still as lurid and nutty and completely un-PC as it was then. Then read the sequels: If There Be Thorns, Petals on the Wind, Seeds of Yesterday, Garden of Shadows, Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth, Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger and Christopher’s Diary: Secret Brother. Or you can watch the recent spate of Lifetime movies, they’re pretty f*cked up too.