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!

I remember girls at school raving about these books but I was more into Louis L'amour type westerns than "girly" books so never read them.

I've just read both the wiki synopses and the extract linked to above and boy they look grim, plus the writing is terrible.

Oh, and your friend is a twat. I don't think he's gaslighting you, he's just one of those guys who always has to be right.

I’m not sure what this is about but wiki says right off it’s about incest, as does pretty much every other review.

Suspect he’s not read it, anyone who has read the book knows incest is pretty much the main theme. However I don’t understand why you’re saying wiki and reviews don’t mention it because they do, it’s the main theme.

As others have said, it's hardly subtle!

The parents were "half-Uncle/half-neice" but you find out they were half siblings in one of the books.

The brother rapes the sister in the attic at the end of the first book, as I recall. He was "sorry" afterwards.

A clear theme of the novel is incest, yes. Great book too!

Your friend WBU.

www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/14/flowers-in-the-attic-vc-andrews-40-years

"Forty years ago V c Andrews tale of rape, incest and murder-by-doughnut was declared "deranged swill" but new books in her name still sell. Why?"

I do wonder if the PP mentioning negging might be on to something, OP, if there would be the chance of a relationship. If not, perhaps the lockdown has removed a source of ego-boosting so he wanted to boost his superiority. Either way, not a good development. Sorry about the disappointment after you were looking for some positive social engagement.

Good luck.

I forgot about the poisoned donuts... yes, they were probably were utter swill but sure they passed the time over a very boring teenage summer. I wouldn't be reading the likenof them now...

Virginia Andrews was all about the incest! I remember reading another series by her, and one written after her death with an author “writing as VA” and the infest was in every one!

Flowers in the Attic was total incest porn. Also, we find out in one of the many sequels that the children in the attic were also the results of incest although I can't remember which family member her mother had them with. Her father, possibly?

I was addicted to those books in my teens as were most of my friends.

Hey @june2007, the gaslighting part wasn't really covered in my OP. A few times I lost it this weekend as I was being so talked down to so I snapped at him. On these occasions, he'd start talking gently (rather than the usual over me) presenting it as me being the aggressor and him being all reasonable, then he would re-write the entire conversation and claim he had said 'gently debated' with me rather than the reality which was him pushing for an argument constantly and goading me each time, and in a really patronising, belittling and aggressive way. Also, he constantly moved of goalposts, if the internet backed up his argument in any kind of loose way that meant he was right and I was an idiot, if it backed up my argument I was stupid for believing everything I read on the internet. Stuff like that all weekend.

I've not even read it and I know it was about incest.

That sounds hard work, OP, and a friendship is meant to be fun. Not to say friends can't give honest advice or challenge but that just seems grim. Do you plan on reengaging with him? Was he after a relationship, do you think?

He was acting like an idiot. You looked it up on Wiki and he more or less said you can't believe what you read on the internet, (so you have to doubt yourself and everyone else except him because he is right) Its not just about that though but about his behaviour on the whole weekend. i think I'd be tempted to message to tell him how his behaviour affected you and ask why he did it. His reply should tell you where to go with this friendship. And at least you will know.

I don't know any men who have read Flowers in the Attic. I wonder if he has read it at all, and is just arguing with you because he's getting off on acting like a dick.

I was going to be generous and suggest he was getting the name confused with Flowers for Algernon, but I see you even googled.
He sounds like he was deliberately start a fight with you or undermine you to make him feel big, either way he sounds like an arsehole.

The film of Flowers In The Attic is so bad it's good. Although I think it ends with them trying to coerce the grandmother to eat a cookie and her dying in a fire. It's been a long time since I've seen it.

It's like saying 'there's no slavery in Gone With The Wind, unless you choose to interpret it that way'

@Bluntness100 as Wiki mention the brother and sister having sex directly (just about an 'attraction'), my 'friend' claims I made up the sex bit in my head. This is kind of my gaslighting point though. It's right there all over the internet to see, I read the book only a few years back so remember it clearly (my 'friend' read it over 20 years ago) yet he's telling me I am wrong. I said to him it's like me pointing at a yellow cushion and him arguing blind with me it's black, at which point he starts another argument with me about how "some peope are colorblind so it's still subjective." Basically proving what the book is about to him is irrelevant, for some reason he just wanted to argue with me and belittle me this weekend. He didn't want reasonable debate/conversation, he wanted to be a prick to me.

I’m sorry you wasted your bubble on him!

Sorry @Bluntness100 - that was meant to say Wiki doesn't directly mention the incest bit but still...

Sounds as though you need to Consciously Unbubble.

(sorry!)

Bizarre that I and my friends adored these books as teenagers, even though we all knew about the incest plot. Utterly vile, I can't imagine this being acceptable as mainstream teen fodder these days.

@whatshebininagain thanks for the link, sadly I think my friend is so arrogant he won't believe The Guardian either. Also what stings is having to prove I am right! If I had a chat with a friend about a book they remember differently to me, I'd assume I had forgotten parts of it, not tell them they've made it up!

Infuriating. But now you know what he's really like...

Since someone gave a link to the portion of the book where the rape occurs, it isn't really difficult to prove. The book's online.