Tomato Nation Read-Along #3: My Sweet Audrina
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on August 3, 2010 – 8:56 AM49 Comments
Bill Bryson put up a valiant fight, but V.C. Andrews prevailed — our next TN Read-Along book is My Sweet Audrina. I can’t decide if I’m horrified or thrilled, so I’ve decided to go with the latter. You’ll probably have to buy the book used, but in my experience it’s usually only about a buck.
We don’t need a ton of time to read this one; either you’ll give up in disgust 20 pages in or you’ll rip right through it, ensorcelled by the ick. Look for the discussion thread Monday, August 16, and I’ll schedule a live chat for that same week, so watch this space (and stock up on overproof alcohol).
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Tags: books The TN Read-Along V.C. Andrews
I saw the alert for this post come up on Twitter and actually did a little bounce of glee. Virginia Andrews novels are my crack, and this is definitely an excellent example. Can’t wait for the discussion post!
All I can think about is that this book HAS to be what Audrina CeilingEyes Patridge was named for. Which, actually, explains a lot.
There’s a bunch for $0.75 on half.com – although a this rate, probably not for long. :)
There are a zillion copies in every used book store in South Jersey, I can tell you that from the time my book club did Flowers in the Attic.
This will be my first V. C. Andrews book, ever. Just a warning.
I’m actually scheduled to go on vacation (spouse’s family reunion) this weekend. Normally, this would be the perfect (only) time for me to read for pleasure, but I honestly can’t decide if I’m too embarrassed to be seen reading this by the in-laws. I’ve considered fashioning a book cover out of a paper grocery bag like in school, but that would probably just arouse more curiousity and questions. I don’t own a Kindle…what to do?
I *know* this is in one of the big boxes o’books in my parents’ basement. Drive out to the suburbs or just buy it again? Pity it does not appear to be available on the Kindle. However, you can buy the 1995 hardcover re-release used on Amazon for $1.86.
@Julie-when my sister was in law school she was embarrased to be reading Lucky and Vogue when everyone else was reading The National Jurist and Georgetown Law Review. She took one of the scholarly mags and stapled her Vogue inside…..maybe you can staple Audrina into War and Peace? ;)
OMG, I may just have to do this. I read this book for the first time when I was 11 or 12 and it scared me so much that I had to hide it in a filing cabinet when I finished it (much like Joey on Friends would later hide THE SHINING in the freezer). I wonder what it’ll be like 20+ years later…
Bwahahahahaha, EXCELLENT.
Woohoo!!! Glorious trash!!!!
But, wrong cover art!!!! Its got to be the cheesy 80s cover with the Cupola De Cobwebs, the cut out window and the badly drawn little girl with DaddyStopTouchingMe inside!
http://www.completevca.com/lib_adare_audrina.shtml
Besides, the girl on this cover looks nothing like I’d picture Audrina.
@rick: I purposely used this one because she looks so much like Mariska Hargitay. Which is a hilarious coincidence, given the subject matter.
I cannot believe I have a copy of this, but I do. It’s been sitting on a pile of “I’m probably supposed to have already read these” books.
Ha ha HAH! Sorry, Bill and Lobster Boy, next time, eh!
Can’t wait to read this again–my sister had a huge collection of VC Andrews and trashy, terrible teen horror books, so these are all mixed up in my mind together. Although I can see myself blurting out “It’s for an online book club! I swear! I know it’s garbage, don’t look at me that way, here, I’ll pick up some Pushkin to make it up to you!” at the counter when I go to hand over my hard earned fifty cents.
“Ensorcelled by the awfulness” and “Daddystoptouchingme!” are my catchphrases for the week.
*Rubs hands together, heads out to Twice Sold Tales, whistling*
Oh man, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get through this one again. I remember being utterly horrified when I read it in 7th grade or so. I’ll see if the used bookstore has it but… gah, just got the shudders thinking about it. I might have to sit this one out.
“[E]nsorcelled by the ick” is something I will absolutely, positively HAVE to work into a conversation soon. It’s right up there with “I am your Drill Thrall.”
That’s strange. I read the summary at Amazon.com and now I realize I must have read this back in the day, only because I recognize one of the more minor subplots; I have absolutely no recollection of actually reading the book. I am also pretty sure I know the ending, but I feel as though I know it from being told by someone who read it, not from actually reading it myself. Very odd. Maybe my mysterious dead sister read it and I have somehow inherited some of her memories….?
@Nik, thanks for the suggestion. Maybe I will buy a decoy book used, tear off the cover and glue it over the MSA cover.
Oh, man. This is gonna be GOOD. I can’t wait!
@Kristina: oh, honey. I’d say that aren’t all like this, but, well. That’s a lie.
Oh, thank you for posting the original cover! I can’t believe that not only did they change that, but they also changed V.C. Andrews’ name!
Oh how I loved these books…
Hee. “Tonight, on a Very Special Episode of ‘Touched By an Uncle’…”
I was planning on going to my local used bookstore tomorrow morning since I’m now on the night shift to get some reading material. Now I have a purpose! Find this book! V. C. Andrews… here I come! :-)
@Annie F yeah, I get why they started publishing books under the VC Andrews moniker after Virginia Andrews died and someone else was writing, but retroactively renaming the other books seemed like rewriting history.
I’m so bummed, I’m going on holidays on the 16th and will have sporadic internet access, so I won’t be able to join in the chat. I’m not going through the trenches if I won’t have anybody to suffer with me.
Re: Virginia Andrews’ name – if anyone was wondering, it’s basically shorthand for the actual author. If the book is attributed to Virginia Andrews, it’s one of the four she wrote. If it’s attributed to V C Andrews, it was written by her estate’s ghost writer.
And yes, I embrace my Virginia Andrews fandom. It isn’t exactly literature, but she’s the one “bad” author I’m completely unashamed of adoring completely. I re-read Flowers in the Attic every couple of years, and have since I was 12 and stole it from my mother for want of a new book. :)
Love “ensorcelled by the ick,” but, Jen S 1.0, I think “I’ll pick up some Pushkin to make it up to you” might have to be MY catchphrase of the week.
Bracing myself…
I may open the discussion thread early, as a support group for the ick. Yeah, there’s a central spoiler, but it’s not exactly that tough to suss out.
Since I had to order it used, here’s hoping that I get it in time, then. I’d hate to miss the chaos.
It’ll sort of be the literary equivalent of the pie-eating contest in Stand By Me.
Yay discussion thread earliness! I’m already outlining the drinking game perameters.(Every time the word wicked is used = drink. Every time a word is repeated, repeated for effect = drink. One shot for every time a weird hair/eye color is fetishized, etc.)
Oh, man, this is awesome. I’ve gotta fly from TX to FL and back again in less that 48 hours next weekend, plus spend three hours in a car between Orlando and West Palm. I cannot think of a better way to kill the time. Bring on the delicious trash!
I believe that this was the volume that put me back OFF the V. C. Andrews trend in middle school. I’d read the “Flowers” trilogy, hiding them under my mattress…but I vaguely remember thinking of this one “no, this is just too effed up.” Though the detail I remember best is how exasperated I was with dear Audrina’s chameleonic hair color! Especially because (@ferretrick) it did not match the poorly drawn, seemingly albino child on the cover. Anger! Unreasonable 12-year-old anger!
@Kim Heh, Audrina was my first Andrews, but I had a similar experience with Dark Angel (the sequel to Heaven? I think) when I was thirteen. I remember reading the first couple of pages where the main character was presented with a choice, and I don’t remember what it was, but I thought “If she picks (b) she is stupid beyond all comprehension”. Of course she did, so I closed the book and never read another one of Andrews’ works.
We were on holidays at time and I probably had to re-read 10 year old Reader’s Digests and my meagre collection of Sweet Dreams books for the billionth time, so that was quite a statement.
@Jen S: Drink the exact second you figure out the central twist. Drink again every time after that you think “That can’t really be the twist because its 1) obvious 2) stupid and 3) makes no sense.”
@ferretrick: Down a bottle of cooking sherry the minute you read the explanation by a character for why the central twist happened, in a sad and futile effort to blot the knowledge that such horrors exist in the world, and are on the best seller list.
I’m old enough that VC Andrews novels were passed covertly around my junior high (as well as the racier Judy Blume novels.) And later in college I actually saw someone perform a monologue from Flowers in the Attic as an audition piece. Un-ironically.
I couldn’t help myself and read the Wikipedia plot synopsis. Now I *have* to read the book. I remember that reading the other VC Andrews books was a kind of bizarrely sweet torture — one fairytale gruesome twist after another — with a long-delayed comeuppance that brought some relief (but usually was a hollow victory.) I’ve never read much about VC Andrews herself … but it does make one wonder about what went on in her mind. It’s like a modern mixture of the grimmer Grimm’s tales with 19th century gothic mysteries and a dash of the Mary Roberts Rinehart “Had I But Known…” novels.
I may have to wear a false nose and glasses when I pick this up at the used bookstore.
Oh, wow, the chameleonic hair and other things people have mentioned? I think I’ve read this too! I read “Flowers in the Attic” in junior high or high school, and was horrified, and I can’t imagine when or why I would have returned to the Andrews well. Maybe it was on the book exchange shelf in the break room at my job circa 2001?
I also remember the racy Judy Blume books, and had the odd experience of my mother recommending “Clan of the Cave Bear” et al when I was about 14. I read the first three, which were all that existed then, and never got around to anything past that (so I don’t know if Ayla and Jondalar ever find his people!). The books may have been a substitute for talking to me about sex, and if so, her aim must have been to make it appear brutal and unpleasant until your true Cro-Magnon love shows up and does things that are apparently pleasurable but don’t make any sense (he does what to your what with his tongue? Ew! Why?) to someone who’s never even been kissed.
@Liz in MI
Ugh, I have been trying to forget Clan of the Cave Bear for years… the book didn’t harm me, but the movie with Daryl Hannah definitely scarred me. I must have been too young for some of those sex scenes, and…well…
VC Andrews on the other hand…I remember hiding in my aunt’s room and sneaking those. I found them grossly fascinating (they did what with their brother/uncle/grandfather?!).
Ferretrick, thank you for linking to the original cover art. When the poll was up I was convinced that this was one of the many VC Andrews books I hadn’t read as a kid. I remembered reading the first few Flowers in the Attic books and one other. Like Kim I think that this book put me off of any other VC Andrews books. Of course, at 13 I was also reading John Saul and Stephen King. How did I sleep at night?
It wasn’t until I looked at the original cover art of the girl in the rocking chair that I was convinced that I had read it. The only thing I remembered about the book is the central twist.
I have since read the Wikipedia plot synopsis for this one and the ALL five Flowers in the Attic books. Not a lot of work got done yesterday afternoon.
Oh, don’t forget to drink every time “ineffectual small fists” are mentioned!
Oh, and this is a terrible thing to admit, but I *still* have trouble understanding how exactly The Twist was perpetrated.
I’ll also admit that I love — or maybe “love” is more appropriate — V.C. Andrews’s early stuff, and this one is one of my favorites along with the first and second Dollanganger ones, which I read when I was in 5th or 6th grade.
I can’t wait to read the discussion thread; I totally just marked my calendar.
@Liz in MI
Somehow my mother had a copy of The Plains of Passage on one of the many shelves when I was a kid and, due to her “if I restrict my daughter from reading any book in the house that only guarantees she’ll read said book the second my back is turned” policy, I managed to read the book somewhere around 5th or 6th grade. Hey. It had horses in it. I would go through a lot of “no WAY to people do that by choice!” reactions to tongues and such if it meant that there were horses that could be read about.
Skip to 7th grade.
Girls are passing Blume’s Forever around, gawking at the sex scenes. I go home that night, spend some time hunting up ‘appropriate passages, return to school the next day, hand one of my friends a thoughtfully dog-eared copy of Auel’s book, wait, wait, wait…
That was the end of Forever.
—
I might have to find this Andrews book. I never did read any of her stuff, but this sounds delightfully trashy.
OMG, I may just have to do this. I read this book for the first time when I was 11 or 12 and it scared me so much that I had to hide it in a filing cabinet when I finished it (much like Joey on Friends would later hide THE SHINING in the freezer)
Off topic, but Rachel hid The Shining in the freezer – Joey hid Little Women, because he was upset that Beth wasn’t getting any better. That is my favorite moment of the entire series.
I had to ask my local used bookseller to help me find this and was rightfully ashamed. I read this when I was in middle school and it was seriously disturbing. Maybe this will relieve some of the trauma. Or make it worse.
I think I read this book at 13 or 14, and figured out the plot twist in the first few chapters because the math just didn’t add up. Those of you who have read it know what I’m talkin’ about!
@Laurie:
YES! I will not try to backpedal and say that I would completely understand the twistiness if the math added up, but I will say that I couldn’t (can’t) get it to do so. Whether that’s the book being messy, or me being dumb (or a little of both), I don’t quite know.
@ avis: You say ‘relieving’, I say ‘reliving’ – let’s call the whole thing off! … No?
Also, I think Rachel hid The Shining in the freezer after Joey admitted that he’d had to do that himself a time or two. Whatever the case, that “Honey, do you want to put the book in the freezer?” moment is one of my favourites, too. That and “Rachel, you’re about to ruin the only book that Joey ever loved that isn’t The Shining!”
Oh man, I have a 14 hour flight on the 15th back to the US. I might have to stop and see if I can find this book in the UAE though it will be so embarrassing to be caught reading it by my fellow passengers. Maybe the cover will be different in a foreign country and people won’t make the connection. . .
@Sandman: it isn’t any less traumatic this time! And maybe more confusing because I keep trying to figure out the whole timeline issue.
@Jennifer M- But no one will dare to say anything, because if they know enough to judge you, they are equally guilty.
I got to page five – I have a guess as to the big twist. I’m not saying I’m right, just my first inkling. (Just wanted to record this somewhere.)
This is my first ever Andrews, so I’m really looking forward to trying to imagine what a middle school me would’ve thought of this (I, too, read the Auel books as a young teen!)
I don’t know if I can take the awfulness, but I’ll give it a try.
I don’t know how I got my hands on these as a 13 year old (or younger?!), because they weren’t my mother’s style. I think I’d pick them up from secondhand stores when we went shopping, and no one checked up on what I read because I read so freaking much!
My aunt and mother got me hooked on V.C. Andrews books when I was younger. I have read every single one of her books. She is a very talented author!! Although her books are not exactly the “normal” reading, I have to say this is one of my favorites!!