MEMOIR
The Stories in My Attic
There are authors who helped define your youth against the turning tides of puberty
One of my favorite childhood memories is growing up reading Sue Townsend. But it was an odd time, I must add. At 13, the girls in school were busy reading Virginia Andrew’s Flowers in the Attic. Everyone was talking about it like it was Fifty Shades of Gray. Being a bit thick and daft, I was late to the game. I was also a new kid in school, freshly transported from England to Malaysia.
From what I gathered from the excited whispers in school, Flowers was about a cruel grandmother who locked up her grandchildren in the attic of the sprawling Dollanganger mansion. With their father dead, the children’s mother was complicit with the grandmother, who, for some reasons, hated the mere sight of them. Repeatedly, they’re described as beautiful children, with their blonde hair and blue eyes. Hence, they’re the flowers in the attic.
Intrigued, I went out and bought the novel. Within a day, I finished the whole book.
Without the children realizing it, their food was laced with poison, with compliments from both their grandmother and mother, the latter of whom by now had found a new potential husband. Eventually, the tainted food killed the youngest sibling. The…
