If There Be Thorns: The Prelude

People tend to hate this book for two reasons, the first being the dual narrator thing.  I can't blame 'em: multiple first-person narrators are difficult to write and a pain in the butt to read, especially if the voices are not very distinctive.  She does a very good job of alternating between characterization--you can open the book at random and know after only a few words if you're in a Bart chapter or a Jory chapter--but voice-wise?  Not so much.  All of Andrews characters use the same syntax and vocabulary.  She makes an effort by having Bart drop his Gs and use a lot of sentence fragments, but for the most part, the narration is pretty uniform.

The other reason is Bart.

I'll make a case for Bart.  He ends up with the strongest, most complex characterization in the entire book, leaving the rest of the cast looking like indecisive, oblivious milquetoasts with their heads up their asses.  A lot of people find Bart creepy and off-putting, which is absolutely the case, but there is no denying that he is indeed Cathy's kid.

If There Be Thorns is arguably Andrews' most ambitious novel thus far.  She's writing from the perspective of two very young characters.  There are two narrators who alternate chapters.  And it's the only Andrews' novel with male protagonists.

That being said, all these things are executed pretty badly, though not all that much worse than in any of her other novels.  I've complained before that Andrews is terrible at writing realistic children, and males, and indeed human beings.  When all these elements are pushed to the forefront at the same time, the weaknesses are all the more obvious.

Yet on a technical level, this is probably one of Andrews' better novels.  Since she's dealing with a shorter period of time than the other books--a single summer, rather than years--a lot of the pacing and continuity errors that were so confusing in the first two books vanish.  And at times she gives a very clear image of the separation between adult-world and child-world, and the uneasiness of children who realize that their parents are untrustworthy even while they are totally dependent on said parents.  These are themes that were very prevalent in Flowers in the Attic, but here, she seems to get further under their skin.

Shall we start this thing?  Let's start this thing!

Introduction: A Mission of Shame

They say there is only so far you can distance yourself from something before you find yourself coming back around to it. Well, no. I said that. Just now.

I read the entire original works of V.C. Andrews back when I was a green lass of ten or so--back before I had any idea of what was actually happening in the books. They were thrilling, fraught, filthy (for a ten-year-old), and best of all, they were absolutely forbidden. These were adult books. And I couldn't keep my hot little hands off 'em. This was before I discovered real porn.

As I grew older and my reading tastes matured, I was mildly embarrassed to admit that not only had I read all the books, I could recall most of their plots in lurid detail. Say what you will about Andrews' writing style, but you can't deny the woman could come up with a riveting premise. A premise which she would then drag out for five increasingly and painfully protracted novels--but still!

I realized there was a whole generation of girls who had grown up in the V.C. Andrews hey-day and likewise read the books when they were too young to fully comprehend how bad they were. Most of these young readers have grown into thoughtful, literate, mature women who now recall the books with a mixture of nostalgia and disgust. And the rest of them like Twilight.*

My mission is to examine and comment upon the eight "canon" novels of V.C. Andrews oeuvre, largely so that I can get it all out of my system and move on with my life.

I don't know how far I'm going to get with this, to be honest. I am a full-time student with friends, deadlines, and something marginally resembling a real life. My aim is to post a review of at least one novel per month, perhaps supplemented with some commentary on All Things Andrews.

May God be with me.





*I kid. There is nothing wrong with liking Twilight. Unless you have some self-esteem.