Written after reading the first hundred pages of Flowers in the Attic.
While reading books or watching a film or two, I enjoy the feeling of being warned gently. I enjoy the kind of warning that hums in the background, the kind that takes its time, creeping along the wallpaper, curling up inside a sentence. That’s how the first hundred pages of Flowers in the Attic feel. Perhaps that’s why I like the experience of reading it so much. I love the small, peaceful moments before a disaster. I love lingering on them afterwards.
It’s hard to describe the joy I get from stories that don’t scream their horror right away, that delay it. Before the attic, before the rot, before the anger. There’s this pristine house, this beautiful family, this illusion of safety; yet, every word is dipped in something sticky. I can feel the wind gathering even when the windows in the attic are closed.
That’s why I love Nicole Dollanganger too, she was why I was drawn to the series. I love eating stuff up that my favorite artists have found inspiring. In the book so far, the way sweetness spoils, the way innocence is always one page away from being split open just scratch the right surface inside me. I feel like there’s this shared aesthetic between them. This whisper of, “Something is wrong,” but not loud enough to confirm it. Not yet.
Reading it, I feel like I’m watching something sacred get softly tainted. I love how it lingers, how it doesn’t rush to punish me. That storm, you know it’s coming, plus the wait is intoxicating. There’s pleasure in the stillness before it hurts. Perhaps because I know how to live there. I’ve spent so much time in my own versions of that attic. Where the world gets smaller, where a girl gets quieter, where the air turns sweet and stale at the same time. You learn to romanticize the wallpaper because there’s nothing else left, you watch the light move across the ceiling like it’s something holy. You decorate your dread.
Sometimes, I read not to escape but to recognize. And this book, even just the beginning of it, recognizes something in me. Something I usually have to bury. It makes space for the awful things that take their time.
If you use media in order to silence your thoughts for a while, you may also enjoy before The White Lotus finale.
