Weird gaslight-y thing from visiting male friend...

[Margerine78]

I already know IANBU and my ‘friend’ behaved badly but this post is more for my sanity…

Has anyone read ‘Flowers in the Attic’ and do you agree there’s a subtle storyline about the brother and sister having an incestual relationship. I mean, the sister is pregnant with her brother’s kid in the prequel so…Sorry for the dark book choice but it came up in conversation somehow and my friend point-blank told me I was wrong as he couldn’t remember it happening.

This friend stayed over (support bubble thing) this weekend, I was so looking forward to it after being on my own all lockdown, but he spent whole weekend telling me I was wrong about literally everything - books (as above), films, TV series, how I washed up, how I cooked, how I mixed drinks, my music taste, even how my oven worked! He's normally a nice guy but he turned into a chauvinistic arrogant, argumentative and gaslighting douche this weekend when I most needed to have nice company.

For some reason the book thing pissed me off the most as instead of admitting he may have missed that subtext as he read it 20 years ago and taking my word for it as someone who reads a lot, he instead spent hours making me feel like I imagined it and I’m losing my mind!

Missing the point of the thread, but I found this:

The most obvious contender is the incest subplot that every 80s preteen seemed to know about in that remote era before social media, even without reading the book. However, in this 411-page paperback, the two-part plot twist barely takes up more space than that devoted to the explanation of the convoluted way Mr. Dollanganger met his end on the highway. We get a reveal of the niece-uncle marriage shortly after the inciting incident (dad’s demise), then it’s years before young Christopher takes it into his head to rape sister Cathy in a brief but unnecessarily graphic passage on page 356.

Does anyone have a copy of the book who can confirm?? Irrationally annoyed on OP's behalf.

Read that book years ago and yes, the incest is the main storyline, generations of it. Sounds like your friend just wanted to disagree with you so he could feel superior to you and would have argued the sky is green to make his point.

The man's an idiot.

Not only because he's wrong but because he used the word 'art' without beginning the sentence "this is not".

(This was probably one of my worst reads ever - until someone loaned me 'Fifty Shades of Grey' which certainly took the top spot for boring, badly written and pretentious drivel.)

Yes your right. I read both books, Flowers in the attic and Petals in the wind. They leave the house attic and set us as husband and wife and have more than one child and he dies. I wanna say in a car accident? She ends up back with the grandmother feelig like she has no where left to go with the kids.
Horrible sad books, I read as a teen too.
He's forgetton and doesn't want to admit it, or he never read them.

What a knob! Message him and ask him WTF has happened to him, and what he’s done with his previous personality

He's lost the plot, literally.

You're close enough friends to have him come to stay, surely you're close enough friends to pull each other up when you're being a weird grumpy git?

Goodreads.com has some reviews that quote some of the scenes that OP didn't understand (according to her friend)

He is bonkers. Don't let him come round again unless others are there for a social gathering and he goes home promptly when they do. He won't be able to monopolise you and fixate on one topic then.

I wonder if lockdown has altered his mind somehow.

For the record, I read the Virginia Andrews horrible books when they came out and don't remember that bit but so what? You do, therefore it happened and it does sound likely given the 'flavour' of the story. I've no intention of reading again to check :-).

He’s probably always been like that but pre-Covid there were enough distractions to not notice it so much.

He’s a passive aggressive twat and, unless you’re also passive aggressive, I’d ditch him.

Order him a copy and have it sent to his house with a note saying 'Not a book about incest ;)'

He'll never speak to you again, but he doesn't sound like much of a loss!

Ah, ok, I've found it online. It really bloody isn't subtle, it's disgusting. I read that book when I was a teen - I knew it involved incest, but.... bloody hell

Won't copy and paste here because it really is horrible, but here is a link if you want it OP. Massive trigger warning, obviously.

You sound incredibly patient, OP.

It's very possible I would have told him to drop the subject completely before I purchased a copy of the book and shoved it up his arse.

You were right, he was wrong.

I've never read it but a quick google confirms it . Quite a disturbing book really not sure I want to read it .
Has he read another book because I'm not sure how he would think it wasn't about incest ?

Sounds like he behaved like a complete cunt. Could he be depressed? No excuse really, but may go some way towards explaining the shift in him. (Unless he's always like this?) I recognise that sort of pointless, irritable 'looking for an argument' rage as a feature of depression, both in myself and other people. It's vile.
And yes wasn't the incest the main point of that book?
I'd be giving him a VERY wide berth and perhaps reconsidering the friendship if he continues to behave like a dick.

There are two main serious problems

he thinks it’s art

You read it as a grown adult

What a knob

Incest isn't a subplot in these books. There's nothing covert about it: it's overt, explicit, and carries some bizarre assumptions that it's not only inter-generational but somehow 'catching'. The theme of child abuse leading to infanticide - both attempted and successful - is a related subtheme, to the tune that 'the line of sin must be ended now'. The idea was that the product of an incestuous relationship must be tainted beyond redemption and purged from the face of the earth, revealing a curious contradiction between this attitude - taken by the book's main antagonist but also seemingly a key didactic point in the book - and the sense in a later instalment that the mutually-obsessed brother and sister rightfully belonged together and the reader should root for that relationship. Ugh. That was the real low patch.

I'm not unfamiliar with books that describe very dark themes and oppressive atmospheres, but this is a key contender for one of the grimmest novel series I've ever read (and I've had the nasty misfortune of having to wade all the way through Clarissa).

They were also appallingly badly written.

I read the series as a late teen and remember clearly the backbone of the story is the brother/sister relationship and incest...in addition to y'know, the being trapped in the attic thing! Wouldn't want to read again

If you read the entire series they end up living together as "man and wife"... so yes they are about insist..... as are most of Virginia Andrews books.

Urgh, his behaviour sounds awful, avoid this friend!

@NotSuchASmugMarriedNow1 he's a really old friend I met through mutual friends years ago, we've known each other for 15+ years. That's the annoying/upsetting thing. I've never known him to act like such a dick to me. I always thought he respected me but he treated me like I was the thickest person he had ever met this weekend.

He clearly hasn't read flowers in the attic, hence the tripe that he was trying to convince you.

It's ok to say he's an idiot and block him.

FedUpAtHomeTroels - that isn't right, I think you are mixing up the mother and Cathy's story. I really loved these books as a teenager - and there are more than two books as well, I think the series is four books long, maybe even five with the prequel. Cathy and Chris never have a child together, and they don't end up back with the grandmother either.

Book one is them in the attic with their twin siblings ending with them escaping. Book two is when they live with a doctor called Paul, who starts off as a father figure but then Cathy has a relationship with him. Then her next relationship is with a fellow dancer called Julien - who she has her first son with. (He's the one the breaks her feet and is fairly abusive).

Later on Cathy sleeps with Bart - her mother's boyfriend - as you do, and that produces her second son, also called Bart. Cathy does go and visit the house - not to live, she sneaks in and I think find her younger brother's body in the house. Cathy's mum has remained with the grandmother - and I'm pretty sure the grandmother dies in a fire.

Then in the book where Cathy and Chris are older, they live together as husband and wife. A woman moves in next to the them who wears a black veil, which turns out to be their mother - but they don't know. She befriends Bart, and Bart ends up being quite crazy. At some point Cathy and Chris adopt a girl as well - who Bart hates.

Also Cathy's parents were not brother and sister - they were uncle and niece.

This is all from memory so may have some details wrong. Then there is a book that covers that grandmother's story as a prequel.

Also loved the Heaven series at the time, and My Sweet Audrina.

Obviously as an adult the whole series is crazy and twisted, but I did really like them at the time!