TN Read-Along #3 Discussion Thread: My Sweet Audrina
“I don’t have any legs — that’s what!” shrieked Billie.
I would crack a joke here about spoiler warnings, but it’s a hallmark of My Sweet Audrina that, by the time any twist or dark secret is revealed in the text, the reader has either figured it out 70 pages ago, or lost interest completely. Either way, it’s an anticlimax each time; I had completely forgotten former figure-skating champion turned double amputee turned Audrina’s mother-in-law-slash-sexual-stepmother Billie Lowe, but the character sketch is so mercilessly saccharine, the foreshadowing so graceless (yet opaque), and the subplot so irrelevant that, by the time Audrina began to say things like, “Hey, I wonder what’s with THE SUPER-LONG DRESSES BILLIE IS WEARING,” I could not have cared less. In any other book, I might criticize the soapily abrupt “I don’t have any legs — that’s what!” Here, I was just glad that someone had finally arrived at the goddamn point, no matter how cloddishly.
The entire book is like that. Andrews is trying for creepy, but much of it is unintentional (in no other writer’s work do young women spend so much time spying on blood relatives Doing It), and several times I wondered whether I had forgotten yet another twist, namely that Audrina’s original desecration in the woods had taken place at the hands of her own father. One mention of a parent’s full lips is probably about six too many as it is; no need to subject us to those full lips mashing down on the thin, joyless lips of YOUR AUNT, or raining kisses on your SEVEN-YEAR-OLD FACE BECAUSE YUCK.
I also don’t understand the ending. I understand the twist, although upon rereading it I felt like I must have forgotten something else, some other horror, that would have made nearly 400 pages of lead-up worthwhile, like, yeah yeah, the First Best Audrina is you, and…? But then Audrina finally grows a backbone, tells everyone in the house, “Hey: gross,” and is getting ready to peace out, but then Sylvia the possibly-not-delayed-after-all sister…brain-locks her into staying? Because otherwise Sylvia will kill them all with her prisms? Because it is her density?
I’ve seen it done before, the last-two-pages awwww SHIT ending. Tom Tryon has a doozy in his catalog. (At least, it seemed like it 25 years ago.) This is not that. Andrews tries for a Tryonic or Faulknerian “you can’t escape the thrall of Whitefern” thing, but it’s not ambiguous in a compelling way; it’s just confusing.
Then again, Audrina processes Arden’s accessory-after-the-facting of her rape by having animalistic sex with him like five times in the rain on an empty grave (“…as you do”), so scoring high on the relatability index is clearly not a priority here.
Tags: books the fuck? The TN Read-Along Tom Tryon V.C. Andrews
“having animalistic sex with him like five times in the rain on an empty grave (“…as you do”), so scoring high on the relatability index is clearly not a priority here.”
I had to close my door because I was laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face! I can just hear you saying “as you do”.
I had the same ick factor when I read it again. I never got the interest in seeing FAMILY having sex. Ew. I mean my brother is married and I STILL think EW if I have to picture that.
Thanks for the memories guys! I was 12 when I read this and it was just as hilariously bad and squicky as I remember!
Here’s what I never understand when reading VC Andrews: what year is it?! The women always seemed to be wearing Victorian ensembles (although for whatever reason, in this book Vera always struck me as some sort of 20s era flapper. I don’t know). I know there is a mention of jeans at one point, but mostly those books never seemed to have a time frame. Maybe that was the point.
The whole Sylvia sub-plot was bizarre. I really expected that it would have turned out that she died as well, but then she was horribly retarded, but not really. And she killed everyone by blinding them with the prisms so they would fall down the stairs? And that worked? Every time?
So bizarre.
Let’s not forget the pointed description of her aunt’s nipples, visible through her “filmy peignoir,” and that’s another thing — dear shitty writers of the world, peignoirs are pretty much always filmy, so how about you skip that part of the description and focus on rewriting the part where a child is watching her father and her mother’s sister having the sex, kthxbai.
So much WTF but what confuses me (on a factual level) is that her dad claims he wanted to let her keep her memory of meeting Arden when she was 7. What did that mean? When we see her meeting him for the first time (as 7 y.o. Audrina 2) was that real or was that her memory of meeting him from the first time she was Audrina?
And were we supposed to like Arden? Because-constantly getting mad at her for being sexually hesitant, even knowing she was GANG RAPED AT 9; sleeping with Vera every time he was sexually frustrated; trying to break down the door to her hotel bathroom because she was not coming out quickly enough. He was a nasty piece of work.
I can see that Vera may have been the one to kill her mom (the door, the missing check) but was it Vera or Sylvia who killed Billie?
This was so cofusing on so many levels because no one acted like a real human being. Did Billie really think putting on tons of crappy makeup and a tacky dress hide the fact she had no legs?
And the rocking chair issue was so inocnsistent. One page she won’t ever use the chair then she is using it for her own purposes and the she says that Vera is the only one using it.
I guess we could assume that it made no sense deliberately; the book is messed up because of our unreliable narrator. But that may be giving it way too much credit.
With the caveat that this is not aimed at any reader here…
To paraphrase James Lileks, this is not a “What’s wrong with this picture” kind of book. This is a “What’s wrong with you, that you like this book” kind of book. I can’t even see “V. C. Andrews” in print without thinking of that David Sedaris essay in which he and his sisters stumble across this horrifically badly-written porno about a family so incestuous, their genital calluses make “zzzip” noises when they walk. Are any “nopples” getting “paunched”?
I go now, to think of happy puppies frolicking in sunny meadows. With nuns. Who are not committing incest.
I read this for my own blog last year, and I started off thinking it would be funny to keep track of the most outrageous quotes. After the first chapter, I gave up on that, but here were my faves from Chapter 1:
“…Time was as irrelevant as honesty.” This is in the first paragraph.
“It was Vera’s boast that she could be any age she wanted to be — ten, twelve, fifteen, and even twenty.” How is this even possible?
“So often my aunt Ellsbeth would bemoan the day she’d sold her small car to buy the TV set.” The dad has the only car, so the rest of the family is stuck in the big fancy house in the woods all day with nothing to do but watch TV. Why would someone sell their CAR to buy a TV? Is this TV the size of my dresser? Was the car a toy car on cinder blocks? How is this possible?
“My aunt, who’d never been married, loved her portable television set with a twelve inch screen.” THIS IS THE ONE SHE SOLD HER CAR FOR.
“Our furniture had many styles, all of them fancy.” I’m sure I just forgot some important bit of knowledge to make room for that in my head, thanks.
“Each child inherits genes from both parents, and that determines his or her hair color, eye color and personality traits. Babies come into the world to be controlled by those genes and by the particular environment that surrounds them. You are still waiting to fill with your dead sister’s gifts. When you do, all that is good and beautiful in this world will belong to you, as it belonged to her.” Yeah, no wonder LiveAudrina has a freaking complex about living up to her dead sister. Thanks for the lovely talk, DAD.
“Our furniture had many styles, all of them fancy.” I’m sure I just forgot some important bit of knowledge to make room for that in my head, thanks.
Don’t forget that we found out later that all of that “fancy” furniture was reproductions of the original antiques. GASP! …Not, who cares.
I really want to get in on this discussion because there is so much to mock (lovingly, of course — at least in my case) and so many questions to ask! But I am at a loss at the moment; I’ve never had anyone to discuss this book with, and now all of the the stuff I’ve always wondered about is just… a swirling fog (sort of like when you go into a book store spur of the moment, and forget your mental list of “to buy” books); I know it’s there, but the specifics elude me.
Still, to this day, I am confused by how, exactly, the time trickery was done to Audrina. I know the book explains a little, with people changing the calendars around and hiding newspapers, not to mention shock treatment, but pondering the mathematics of it all makes my head spin.
And, seriously, what the hell was with the prisms? It’s such a… bizarrely specific… thing.
Full of “Andrewsisms,” too — “tiny fists” always beating on the chests of oppressive men; everyone is somehow stunningly beautiful with ridiculously distinct features that are so much better than those of non-main characters; “YOU!” she spat…; and, as mentioned, “filmy peignoir”…
I can’t figure it out. Why do I remember (i) Billie with no legs, (ii) the dad having sex with Billie with no legs, and (iii) that the twist ending was that Audrina II was really Audrina I, who had been gang-raped, but otherwise have absolutely no recollection of having read this book? No memory of Vera, Arden, Sylvia, or anything else. I guess the easy answer is, it was so terrible that I blocked it out like a traumatic memory. Maybe if I rock in this chair long enough…
This was my first VC, and man, I enjoyed the nuttery so much. Like Audrina’s freaky hair that nobody else on the planet has. Like the fact that her cousin/half-sister ARRANGED for her to get raped at the age of 9. Like her father being so insane to have one person’s blind adoration that he mentally mindfucked her to think that she was the second Audrina, not the “dead” raped one, and the whole clocks thing. Like the part where nobody ever seemed to leave the house/area they lived in, so Dad had to boink every chick in range regardless of well, anything. So nuts, so funny, so awful. Brilliantly awful.
Though Sylvia and her constant stairs-prism murders are genuinely godawful creepy.
Oh, thank GOD the thread’s open! And my crappy modem finally works! I am so hammered right now (well, no, I’m not, because it’s 10:15 in the morning, but I TOTALLY SHOULD BE.)
This crapfest of ghastly reminds me of the first time I watched The Amityville Horror as an adult. Remember the first time you watched it, and you were a kid and waaaay too young for this and you knew it, but you told your babysitter your folks let you watch scary movies all the time and you watched it anyway? And it was SO DAMN SCARY, with the house Windows of Evil and the lighting and the music and the PIG EYES OMIGAWD….and you had very, very vivid memories of the terror, for years?
And than you put it on your Netflix, popped it in, and sat down to enjoy a freakout of nostalgia–and realized the damn thing is about eighty percent padding? You just sit there going “Okaaaaayyyy–shots of the house, and more shots of the house. What the hell is Margot Kidder wearing? More shots of the house…man, did the pig eyes always look like two laser pointers? Why was this scary again?”
That’s what it’s like. The only way to read VC Andrews is to be way too young for its ickiness, because the ickiness is all it has–the rest is just florid metaphors and confusion and chameleon hair. I remember the scene where Audrina spies on Vera and her music teacher, and when I was nine that shit was like, the Original Apple, but now it’s just badly written porn trying to be significant and it fails on both levels. It’s not lit and it’s not a turn on.
I used to read Tomato Nation years ago when I had a boring job (around 2001). Now I have a boring job again and decided to check it out. Imagine my surprise to see a headstone with MY NAME on it!! It gave me a little jolt…maybe I will make til 5pm now!!
Sincerely,
Virginia Andrews
The day someone explains the math…ok, I read the book a long time ago, and I haven’t quite finished rereading it, but still. Ok, I’m taking from someone above that the rape happened at age 9. Our narrator has to be AT LEAST 12 at the start of the book, so how do you convince, not even a child, anyone with a working brain and understanding of the human body that they are seven years old when they are twelve???!!!! Because, hello, puberty? Not a subtle change!!! ESPECIALLY FOR GIRLS!!!!!! I think that’s why Sylvia kept waving those prisms at Audrina-it was her way of saying, “Hello? Audrina? I’m developmentally delayed and I know this doesn’t add up. Open your eyes, girlfriend.”
I must say though, the book is still complete trash, but at least Andrews prose improved over Flowers in the Attic (or she got a better editor). I noticed far fewer completely cringe worthy sentences like this one…
“It seemed to me like an inverted deep bowl of navy-blue velvet, sparkled all over with crystallized snowflakes instead of stars – or were they the tears of ice that I was going to cry in the future?”
Granted, she still can’t construct a character with more than one dimension, a credible plot, or realistic dialogue, but still, baby steps.
Y’know what creeped me out even more than DaddyControlIssues, the RockingChairofTrauma, TheMentallyDisabledSerialKiller, and the rest of it though? The FUCKING TEA TIMES. The setting a picture of a dead woman who got eaten by cannibals or whatever (seriosuly, WTF), and talking to her and FOR HER as if she were alive? THAT IS JUST FUCKED UP!!!!
You know, I went through my VC Andrews phase around 12-14 and I remember this one as being sort of awesomely batshit.
The re-read has informed me that it’s just kind of sadly and annoyingly batshit. Oh, VC. Have you failed me or have I failed you?
I now know I should never re-read any of the Dawn series, which was my personal favorite. It’s kind of funny how many women of my age (and maybe a few guys?) really got their introduction to the concept of sexuality through stuff like this and Cave Bear. It’s a wonder any of us have survived to relative normalcy.
Ohhh gahhhh CAVE BEAR. I cringe just thinking about all the throbbing and the petals and whatnot.
The FUCKING TEA TIMES. The setting a picture of a dead woman who got eaten by cannibals or whatever (seriosuly, WTF), and talking to her and FOR HER as if she were alive? THAT IS JUST FUCKED UP!!!!
Totally agree! I always felt, since the first time I read it, a weird sense of awkward discomfort at this part and I still don’t know quite why that, of all things, was what did it regarding this book.
Another thing that is prevalent in her books is women throwing their heads back in passion — usually when some relative is watching from the shadows, of course.
[quote]The day someone explains the math…ok, I read the book a long time ago, and I haven’t quite finished rereading it, but still. Ok, I’m taking from someone above that the rape happened at age 9. Our narrator has to be AT LEAST 12 at the start of the book, so how do you convince, not even a child, anyone with a working brain and understanding of the human body that they are seven years old when they are twelve???!!!! Because, hello, puberty? Not a subtle change!!! ESPECIALLY FOR GIRLS!!!!!! [/quote]
Christ, yes! I could see why they kept her out of school–a twelve year old insisting that she’s seven would ring quite a few bells! How much hormone infused beef was this kid eating?
One of the many reasons this book did not work at any level is that VC focused on the whole “hothouse of inscestuous love and hate” so exclusivly that I couldn’t figure out why the rest of the village supposedly hated Whiteferns so much. The only person who wasn’t directly connected with the house was the piano teacher and he was supposed to be from out of town. The townsfolk are supposed to be filled with such a generation-spanning animosity for this family that Vera can convince a pack of 9-12 year old boys to gang rape its youngest member, but WHY? As far as I can tell all any of them ever did was collect antiques and shove close family members down the stairs. Because they were rich? Or pretty? You’d think the police would be raring to bust this entire family after the THIRD death and God knows how many ambulance calls, but they just kinda “whatever” about the whole thing.
I didn’t think it had been years between the time of the rape and the time that everyone tried to catch her up.
I found upon rereading that although I remembered the tea parties, I didn’t remember (or realize) that they were just excuses for the sisters to passive-aggressively spew hatred at one another.
The end is stupid.
Exactly! I mean, Vera broke her leg so many times it gave her a limp, not to mention her arm breaking right after its out of its cast. Where was CPS?
Well, let’s see, timeline is roughly:
Audrina 1.0 is assaulted on her ninth birthday, before the beginning of the narration. Much later, her dad says it took “17 months”–almost two years–for her to forget everything and accept she was Audrina 2, age SEVEN, and nothing had ever happened.
So basically at the very minimum, Audrina would have been eleven years old, but more likely twelve, when she was convinced she was a prepubecent child and that her older sister had died nine years before. I guess nobody explained to her about it being perfectly normal for a eight year old to start her periods, grow pubic hair and breasts, and shoot up five or six inches. Even if you buy the whole thin as a rail undernourished thing, it doesn’t work because she eventually starts looking like a full grown woman, and look, either she’s a Twiggy or a Gina Lollabrigida but you can’t suddenly turn from one to the other! And when she finally DOES go to school, nobody notices a girl who’s supposed to be, what, eleven, looking like a seventeen year old??
Look, VC, I tried. I have cut you so much slack that you could open a pants store. THESE NUMBERS, THEY DO NOT WORK!
Oh, oh, and!
In a book full, overflowing, a veritable cornucopia of crappy details that clear up nothing, my very favoritist in the world!
The police have, at long last, suddenly noticed people fall down the stairs at the Old Whitefern Place, like, every two minutes, and are out there after Billie has gone to her Eternal Reward. They don’t ask why they were called out about fifteen hours after everyone in the house says the body was found, no. But they are terribly, terribly interested in–Vera’s nail polish!
” ‘I was taking a bath,’ repeated Vera, throwing me a hard glare. ‘I sunbathed this morning, and that made me feel hot and sticky. I came inside to wash my hair, and, as I always do, soaked and did my nails. Did my toenails too.’ She thrust forth her expertly manicured nails. Her toenails peeked through her sandals. ‘If I had struggled with Mrs. Lowe, I would have smeared my nail polish.’
” ‘How long does it take for nail polish to dry?’
“He asked me this, not Vera.
” ‘It all depends.’ I tried to remember. ‘One coat dries in a hurry, but the more coats you use the longer it takes to dry. I try to be careful of my nails for at least thirty minutes after the last coat.’
“‘Exactly!’ said Vera, looking at me gratefully. ‘And if you know anything at all about nails you can see I put on five coats, counting the base coat and the top sealing coat.’
“The policemen seemed lost in the complexities of feminine toiletry.”
I don’t even… I just… where to start? Seriously? FOR SERIOUS, NOW, this is the kind of thing police are wasting their time on? Nobody thinks maybe Vera, I dunno, redid her manicure or some radical, whacky shit like that?? That maybe the other people in this nuthouse are covering for her? Why do any of them still have jobs? HEY, POLICE PEOPLE! You are in a house that has had THREE suspicious deaths IN THE SAME SPOT, and countless injuries serious enough for an ambulance call, plus multiple hospital stays! Arrest everyone in the damn place and break their stories! Why in the flippity fuck are you listening to this drivel? Why was it written, why am I reading it? Gah!
Sorry. I get emotional. I’ll go lie down now.
Amazing! This book was referenced in some other blog I love recently (I love it so much I can’t recall where…) and I had to go to Wikipedia to be reminded of the full horror of what went on after Audrina-is-actually-the-real-Audrina became apparent.
I thought finally the name Audrina was lodged in my brain as a member of the cast in The Hills (imagine that being preferable?) but now it’s back to this not very sweet Audrina.
Oh Sarah, I’ve missed your site while I’ve been away watching bad tv, I’m coming back here more often.
Having read a great many of VC Andrews stellar works (yes that’s sarcasm) I find myself confused. Was My Sweet Audrina original recipe VC Andrews or ‘as lifted from the scribbled notebooks left behind by’ VC Andrews?
Because the Casteel series baffled me for years until I realized that she only actually wrote about half of it – Not to mention that reading ‘Web of Dreams’ first completely threw me for all time since I now knew what Leigh VanVoreen’s ‘BIG SECRET’ was and couldn’t figure out why everyone kept going on and on about it.
Much later, her dad says it took “17 months”–almost two years–for her to forget everything and accept she was Audrina 2, age SEVEN, and nothing had ever happened.
I thought it took 17 months for them to scramble everything so that Audrina 2’s alleged age synced up with her biological age — i.e., the tranqs, the ECT, the dicking around with the clocks, etc. took like half a year to take effect and convince her that she WAS Audrina 2 and WAS 7 years old instead of 9 1/2, and THEN they had to start skipping time, saying it was Christmas in July, and so on in order to get the age they TOLD her she was to match up with the age she was biologically. And THAT took 17 months.
Not that I’m overthinking this.
I believe this is Famous Original V.C.; the pub date on my copy is 1982. Andrews didn’t die until a few years later.
I’ve never been able to get the timeline of when Audrina met Arden. She “meets” him as Audrina 2.0, but then later finds out that Audrina 1.0 (or, well, her, because… yeah) was already friends with Arden and he witness the gang rape and ran away. Her father later says that he “let her keep the memory” of meeting Arden, but… what about the way it happened to 2.0? Was that a flashback? Was she re-creating/re-meeting Arden then, so that she actually met him twice?
Good lord, I forgot about that part. HOW?!
What I don’t get: when was Sylvia born? We know it was Audrina’s 9th birthday, but was it the same day she was gang raped, or was it Audrina 2’s “9th” birthday? I’m thinking it was Audrina 2’s fake 9th, because otherwise, it would have been even harder to fake time with a baby around.
I loved VC Andrews, and I don’t care who knows it. She made for interesting reading times when I was 11.
[quote]”‘Exactly!’ said Vera, looking at me gratefully. ‘And if you know anything at all about nails you can see I put on five coats, counting the base coat and the top sealing coat.’
“The policemen seemed lost in the complexities of feminine toiletry.”[/quote]
DUN DUN!!!
Its funnier if you put in a Law & Order noise at the end.
I am sure this one is original VC. This, all of the Flowers series except Garden of Shadows (which she started and ghostwriter finished), and the first two Casteel books are hers.
Hey, Adares: move some bedrooms to the ground floor already! Also: gross.
@Amanda, it was Audrina 2’s “ninth” birthday, at which point she was really–let’s see–oh, hell, who knows how old she was. Sylvia is nine years younger than Audrina, no matter what age Audrina is.
Okay, here’s the word for word explanation from Daddy Dearest:
“You were a clever little girl I had to outsmart. But as clever as you were, you were only a child […] I wanted you to retain a few memories, so I planted them in your head peicemeal. You were seven the first day you met Arden; I let you keep that memory. (so apparently it was Audrina 1.0 who met Arden when she was legitimately 7 years old–which, why does she not remember that when she “re-meets” him at the cottage?) I took you on my lap and as I sat in the rocking chair, I talke to you and told you about your older sister (this was after the rape and he’s reprogramming Audrina to be Audrina 2)and I remolded you, reshaped you into what you’d been before–clean and pure, sweet and loving. Yes, it was I who planted a great many notions in your head. [really disgusting/inappropriate blather about “an angel too good for this world, yada yada yada]
“…I did everything to erase time, to make it unimportant. Because we lived so far from others, I could fool you. I had all the newspapers stopped. The newspapers that came were old ones I stuffed in the mailbox. *I made you two years younger.* (So she was nine and he said she was seven.) […] We gave you tranquilizers and you thought it was only asprin, so you slept often. Sometimes you woke up from a nap and you’d think it was a new day when only an hour had passed… [and he goes on like that. At any rate he claims it took seventeen months to convince her she was Audrina 2 and it was her older sister who died.] So she had to be, at a minimum, eleven when it took. And she thinks she’s seven. She says she remembers visiting The First Audrina’s grave when she’s seven.
Sylvia was brought home when Audrina thinks she’s eleven years eight months old, so she’s really fifteen and a half. At least as near as I can figure. I now have officially spent more time on this damn thing than VC and her editors put together.
“It’s kind of funny how many women of my age (and maybe a few guys?) really got their introduction to the concept of sexuality through stuff like this and Cave Bear.”
Oh my, that’s a good point!
I remember reading Cave Bear and thinking “oh shit, she’s been contaminated now, every baby she has will be a weird hybrid of humans and Clan people!”
God only knows how I didn’t end up out in the desert in a walled compound gibbering survivalist nonsense.
(Although I did like how the main character invents bras, blowjobs, suturing wounds, and dental hygeine.)
“(Although I did like how the main character invents bras, blowjobs, suturing wounds, and dental hygeine.)”
… simultaneously. Hee. She’s quite the multitasker, our Ayla.
Am I misremembering or was the shock therapy done in order to make her forget the rape entirely, but it also removed other memories too? If so, how could he “let” her keep some? (I suspect this plot has no basis in actual science. Heh.)
So (and please excuse my possible density; I feel like the more I try to clarify, the less it makes sense), is that why the father couldn’t just put his efforts into, say, convincing her that no rape ever happened? Yes, I know that’s sick and all, but I’m working within the confines of the V.C., not the real world — you understand…
(Really, the question should be why didn’t he just use his time and energy to help her work through it with a professional, but then there would be no book… or discussion.)
I’m pretty sure that towards the end, Audrina tells us that Vera killed Billie too, because Vera was afraid that Damien would marry Billie and that would put yet another heir between Vera and the money. Then again, that may just be what Audrina wants to believe, since she doesn’t want to think that Sylvia could have done it.
This was my first time with Audrina, although I did read the Flowers books many years ago. I found it quite enjoyable to read, although much of that may be related to the mocking I was doing in my head. All the major plot points just fizzled out. I had gotten the idea (from the jacket, maybe) that Damien’s corrupt stock practices were a big deal that would figure in the outcome. Instead, we get Arden saying, “Oh, he agreed to stop doing that.” Well allrighty-then.
I did think that by the time Audrina was actually 11 or 12, they had caught her back up to being in real (or almost real) time. She may still have been a year off or so, but I don’t think the four year gap remained between her real age and the age she thought she was.
I could go on and on, but VC did that enough already. ;-)
I remember reading this years ago and in fact was able to pull it out of an old box of books I’d kept. The whole time I was reading it I’d remember what was coming up and then think to myself no that can’t be what’s next, that’s to messed-up or that makes no senses and yet every time I was right. I do have to admit I couldn’t put it down, mostly to see if I was right and what messed-up event came next.
Ach, my order was slow so I’m only through the first part of this book – Lucky just died, Sylvia isn’t even home yet…and my jaw is on the floor at the rest of the story. I’m dying. This is awesome.
(Although I did like how the main character invents bras, blowjobs, suturing wounds, and dental hygeine.)
Too true. Heh. If it’s useful, Ayla invented it. If it’s sexy, she and Jondalar did it first, god bless his priestess-deflowering heart.
Actually, that’s probably the big fantasy take-away for readers: even if your Clan kinda hates you, maybe there’s a cute Caveman with a huge wang out there just waiting for you to save his life so you can get your 24/7 freak on.
…still waiting…
Umm, back to Audrina. I never thought about it this way before, but I agree that maybe the time-dickery was intended to bring her 2nd Audrina age closer to her true age. Otherwise, yeah, that gap is just ridiculous. Not that I feel there was a lot of serious thought put into this.
There were some creepy-ass sex scenes in MSA too. What was worse, Audrina’s wedding night, the grave-bang, or Vera and the piano teacher? Gee whiz, Virginia!
So… I’m not the only one awaiting the release of Auel’s “The Land of Painted Caves”?
“(Although I did like how the main character invents bras, blowjobs, suturing wounds, and dental hygeine.)”
… simultaneously. Hee. She’s quite the multitasker, our Ayla.
Well these things do all sort of go together, except maybe suturing wounds. I’m another one who was traumatised by the Clan Series, mostly by the way they went around calling it ‘Pleasures’. Something about it just freaked me out.
In ‘My Sweet Audrina’ I always wondered how putting on a long dress would have concealed Billie’s lack of legs. I suppose Audrina was well and truly screwed up by this point, but wouldn’t she have noticed the lack of leg shaped lumps under the skirt of the dress?
Oh well, VC Andrews has been dead since 1986 and she’s still publishing at least one book a year, which is quite an achievement when you think about it. She must be doing something right.
I haven’t read this particular VC, but clearly I will need to do so very soon. It sounds sensational.
However, I can tell you that you should read ‘Heaven’, if you haven’t done so already. I read it when I was 15 or 16 and I can still quote particularly cheesy passages from memory.
“So… I’m not the only one awaiting the release of Auel’s “The Land of Painted Caves”?”
Oh sweet Jesus, there’s going to be another one? Is this the one where Ayla invents the internet??
“Oh well, VC Andrews has been dead since 1986 and she’s still publishing at least one book a year, which is quite an achievement when you think about it. She must be doing something right.”
Maybe VC is a vampire! It would explain the Twilight series!
I think the timeline is that Audrina, is nine, is raped, and then they spend 17 months reseting her to a “clean” 7 and resetting her to 9. So when Audrina II turns “9” she is actually 10 1/2. Still pre-pubescent, and likely to still be within the realm of normal when she passes through puberty.
Sylvia makes no sense to me, at all.
I think the most confounding thing of all to me is the chair. Because every time she rocks in the chair she is remembering the rape. What exactly is her father trying to help her find that he is willing to have her remember the thing he theoretically did all this to make her forget? I mean, basically, by the time she is an adult, she has bad PTSD from remembering what she thinks is someone else’s rape? Like Nicole, I can understand helping her forget the attack, but what???
(Also when dad finally explains all of it, he says that he would have taken her to the police except that her mom gave her a vicious bath….??????)
I had never read this one before, although I had read a few of the Flowers series. I didn’t remember her writing reading so much like she wanted to be Faulkner before, but that was 80% of what I was thinking reading it was “Hey, bad soft-core Faulkner”.
“So… I’m not the only one awaiting the release of Auel’s “The Land of Painted Caves”?”
Oh, not by a long shot. I’m so there.
“There were some creepy-ass sex scenes in MSA too.”
All of them were creepy. Seriously, was there any non-violent sex in the entire book? If it wasn’t gang-rape or whatever weird S&M stuff Creepy Daddy was engaging in with three different women (that we know about), it was definitely rough. And the dialog during the sex scenes would have made any normal human fall off the bed laughing.
I’m really glad I read this, though, because my standards for f-ed-up-ness just got a huge boost.
I mean, basically, by the time she is an adult, she has bad PTSD from remembering what she thinks is someone else’s rape? Like Nicole, I can understand helping her forget the attack, but what???
I think that’s the creepiest part. I don’t think Daddy Direst was ever interested in helping Audrina. He just wanted a daughter do-over because Audrina was spoiled goods. Now that’s what I call effed-up.
@ Sandman: (He just wanted a daughter do-over because Audrina was spoiled goods. Now that’s what I call effed-up.)
Hmmm, maybe HE should have sat his ass down in the magic rocking chair of forgetting; it would have been way simpler.
Yep, Daddy Damien (and nice subtle name, there, Virginia) was all about Daddy Damien and his incredibly gross, creepy need to be worshiped by his nine year old DAUGHTER. I loved how he blamed it on the mom (“SHE thought I couldn’t handle your horrible violation! It was all HER FAULT you got so screwed up!!”) But mom was completely right! He took his Not Handling to a truly epic place, with the rocking and nebulous “gift” that Audrina 2 was supposed to be “filled” with (BLARGH) and the fake grave (Nobody thought it was wierd he had a grave dug and NOTHING PUT IN IT?? It was the public cemetery and the family plot, not a private gravesite!) and rejecting Vera and—
If I was VC Andrew’s father and read this, I would be giving her epic stink eyes, constantly and forever.
Oh, you just made me remember the GOLDEN RAINTREE! Even the location of the violation of a little girl had to be adorned by something that sounds shiny and special and not for regular, non-ethereally beautiful people.
Why did Arden run away — I forget; was it to get help? And how is it that he, who presumably loved Audrina (I mean, he didn’t have to hook up with, and eventually marry, her) never feel the need to tell her what was what? Or Billie, too — she was written as someone respectable, more or less, why wouldn’t she spill the tragic-but-so-very-beautiful beans?
Oh Jesus, the golden RAINTREE. Juuuuust close enough to “golden showers,” but without quiiiiite going there. Blerf.
Bah! That analogy, however apt, just blew my “overly dramatic and unrealistic yet strangely (albeit unnecessarily) beautiful” theory to shreds!