Review on the Haunted Dollhouse

I enjoyed so much this book, I am glad that my dear Virginia agreed to recommend this gem. As Virginia said in the introduction the pictures are stunningly beautiful, that sepia color really gets into you dreams.. and nightmares! You can read this book in less than an hour and still feel that you accomplished something really important in going through the pages. The main idea in my head is that this is a very allegorical book where there are a lot of riddles meant to make you reflect about your own life but in a very intriguing and fun way. I promise this book is harmless ;) So the story is that I accepted the invitation to go to the world of yesterday when things seemed sweeter and journeyed with Sarah this forbidden Dollhouse. I love dollhouses and although I don't thing I have gotten exactly the dollhouse that Sarah  received, I think I kind of get the idea.

V.C Andrews on Facebook.

My experience with V.C Andrews has been a very positive one, I have got to sense really deep emotions and also a lot of pleasure that I don't get very easily from other authors. This is the reason why I felt so happy when I found out about V.C Andrews groups on Facebook, it was a very good opportunity to get to know people that actually liked V.C Andrews and were willing to share serious and fun conversations about the books. So there I go and join the groups and start talking to others and I was amazed to see and learn new thing about the books, it inspired me to continue reading and creating things in my life. I think there's no other author in facebook that attracts so much attention as V.C Andrews. That's something very special.

The haunted dollhouse

It wasn’t my birthday. Yet, a large and very heavy package came in the mail addressed to me. Like most people, I enjoy opening unexpected packages. Like Sarah in this book, I opened my heavy package with anticipation. I found, to my surprise, a familiar kind of nightmare in Sarah’s story.

With Sarah I stepped into another world, sepia colored, a monotone twilight zone that immediately evoked memories of my own childhood when I had dreams of someday possessing the dollhouse of my dreams. Unlike Sarah, no one ever gave me the kind of dollhouse I really wanted. After reading the text, and viewing the stunningly eerie photographs in this book, I am glad that kind of dollhouse was denied me.

When we are young and vulnerable, and subject to the pressures, the whims and the control of those older, stronger and presumably wiser, we construct within our mind a sanctuary.

In times of distress and disappointment we seek to disappear and fade into the perfect environment where we can control our own destinies. We don’t realize when we are young that there is no perfect place, and if there were how then we would entertain ourselves?

In fantasy most of us can only linger a short while before we are forced back to face up to those problems that drove us into fantasy in the first place.

With a strangely haunted feeling, I drifted into the dollhouse with Sarah, enthralled by the déjà vu send of having been there before as perhaps all little girls-and maybe boys, too-have been there before.

Come journey with Sarah into her perfect environment ; the perfect world of yesterday, when all things seemed sweeter, much better-according to those who are older, stronger and presumably wiser. 

Virginia's Article for First Romance

Dubbed "the fastest-selling author in the United States" by The New York Times, V.C. (Virginia Cleo)
Andrews has become one of the publishing industry's most phenomenal success stories.She is
the author of the enormously popular Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns,
and fourth in her series of thrillers, My Sweet Audrina. All shot to the heights of best-seller lists
nationwide, with each boasting in-print figures in the millions. Though not typically an author of the Romance
genre, Virginia has recently become very much intrigued by it. She concedes that one day she may complete a Romance herself-e
especially now that he's got "the feel" having written Love's Savage Desire for Your First Romance

Virginia believes that stories are everywhere to be found in our lives. She keeps her ideas fresh and invigorating
by piecing together bit from her own life and the lives of others and, of course, inventing a little as well. Virginia enjoys
giving her characters free rein to do as they please. She insists on letting them take over their own
stories, at times surprising even her. Virginia suggests new writers keep their characters constantly thwarted, frustrated, and
in trouble through a novel: never let up until the story's end

A first draft, containing some dialogue and description, can be written by Virginia in a little as four hours;
she prefers this technique to an outline. A completed book can take her anywhere from five month to a year, depending on how well she knows her characters. She will not tolerate radio or television
except the news) while working, and when real creativity strikes, she works for long solitary hours without interruption.
Virginia feels that beginning writers must never write the kind of books they themselves would not enjoy reading
Once having decided upon a specific genre she advises them to read as much as possible within it, take notes on story transitions, and
summarize plots. This, she says, will give beginning writers a feel of how a novel is put together.

Inspiration

Why would you care of children made of words?
 you who are made of immortal flesh and blood

The First House

 Drawing of the first Dollanganger house. It should be a house from the Fifties.

Bible Citation

This is the meaning of the first bible citation we find at the beginning of Flowers in the Attic:

Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, "What are you making"? or "Your work has no handles"?

After Cathy lost her father in a car accident  and then  brought to live at Foxworth Hall, she started doubting God as the best judge and until the end of the novel, the reader can see that she  is still left with a feeling of resentment towards God. 

Even though in the prologue of her book she asks  God for help, saying that God in his infinite mercy would help her find a publisher who would put her words into a book, the ending may suggest that Cathy still holds a grudge against God. I like to explain the contradiction by noting that by the time Cathy wrote the book, she may had matured more and she may  had  also realized that she may had committed acts that made her situation at Foxworth Hall even more difficult. The narrator point's of view of God had changed since she left Foxworth Hall and began writing her account of what during the time she was imprisioned at this place. 

This bible citation in itself implies that you should not contend with your maker: God, because at the end you will lose. And this Bible citation may also  be used  by the author to ask in a metaphorical way, why is there so much suffering and dead in the world.