Talk:V. C. Andrews

Neiderman
Of all the 50+ novels listed here, only six or seven seem to have been published during her lifetime. Is this correct? And does it mean that all the others were written by Andrew Neiderman (alone)? Had the two known each other?  18:15, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Also, Neiderman has an impressive list of 38 novels that were published under his own name. Could he have written almost 80 novels?  18:18, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * It is usually said that all stories were Andrews' creation, and Neiderman only finished them, but I don't know whether this is the truth or only a marketing strategy. BTW the books aren't really long, some of them are only about 150-200 pages, and neither of them is longer than 500 pages, so technically it's not impossible that Neiderman wrote lots of them. Alensha 18:59, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I’m new to VC Andrews and I must say I’ve never read or experienced anything so addictive in my life! I can’t put them down. Fans seem split on exactly where the late VC Andrews’ writing ended and where the ghostwriter’s began. I still love them anyway.

So let me ask you VC Andrews’ fans, is it just me or are these the most horrific and depressing stories ever written? Were these the chapters of the ‘Necronomicon’ Satan edited out because they were too offensive?

It seem Andrews’ overall theme is, we get to know and love a character and then horrible things happen to them so we cry our eyes out. But unlike most stories where the heroine overcomes tragedy and good triumphs over evil the tragedies just keep coming! Even stories where the hero dies we are given some sense of closure, these poor characters just can’t catch a break.

We never get, “And they lived happily ever after.” Or even, “And they died and could now be at peace.”

I started reading with the Dollanganger saga. All I can say is, Carrie had the right idea! Death seems to be the only way out. Even if these characters crawled into a hole some evil family member would still hunt them down. I find it impossible to believe that so much sxxx could happen to Cathy and Chris.

‘FITA’ left me feeling somewhat good. They triumphed over evil, they escaped Foxworth Hall. I was still left in suspense would Cathy and Chris stay together and get married? I hoped so.

‘PITW’ left me with a more happy ending. Yes, Foxworth Hall has burned to the ground. Yes, Cathy and Chris have married and can live happily ever after. But I was mainly angry at Cathy for not achieving this happy ending 18 years earlier. I felt that she was the villain of the book in that she caused 99% of the tragedy.

For example she dumps Chris her true love. The love scenes between them stopped my heart but they never got to consummate the relationship for 18 years!

Then there was her affair with Paul. I was mainly against this because she belonged with Chris and it was hard to tell if she and Paul were in love or just in lust. But I started to like Paul. Certainly he did love her and they would have been happy together. He could have kept her out of trouble.

Dumb move number three was marrying Julian. What did she expect? A good ballet career? Anything would have been better than marrying an abusive two timing rapist. When he broke her toes on stage I was cheering, now she’ll finally leave him. But no she still loved him. Then there was his car accident, yes no more Julian. But no he survives and she wants him to recover? Finally he commits suicide! But still she loves him!

Yes a good career is nice, but at the cost of happiness what’s the point? I think most people would take love over money, especially when love was so close for Cathy.

With the tragedy of her marriage over she had a second chance, to marry her true love Chris or at least a really nice stable guy Paul. But no she moves to Virginia to seduce Bart Winslow to get revenge on Corrine. Wouldn’t Cathy’s best revenge be living a happy life, proving the attic had not broken her?

Her seduction of Bart made no sense. She couldn’t even seduce him. He ends up raping her and still she keeps sleeping with him and wants to have his child? How is having the child of her rapist revenge on Corrine?

Then comes the final confrontation at Foxworth Hall. My confrontation with the Foxworths would have involved power tools and a sound proof room. It is useless to verbally confront someone totally heartless like Corrine with her sins. In her psycho mind she’s in the right.

It was nice of Cathy to stay married to Paul his final years. I must give her that.

‘ITBT’ and ‘SOY’ were nice in that at least we got back to having Cathy and Chris back in their roles as heroine and hero, which is where they belong.

So am I alone here? Or is there some moral to the story I'm missing?

I guess the theme of tainted blood and family curses precludes a happy ending or a "moral". I mean, Cathy goes on and on about how she won't be weak and stupid like her mother, yet she's just as man-crazy in the end, falling in love with abusers like Julian and Bart and inappropriate people like her brother and her foster-father. In Garden of Shadows, Olivia is adamant that Corinne won't grow up as flighty as her biological mother and grandmother, and we all know how well that turns out. Even adopted family members aren't immune. Cindy grows up into quite the vapid little vixen. On the male side, Jory marries a Foxworthesque bimbo who shags his brother; Bart is as psychotic as Malcolm, Olivia, and John Amos combined; and even "heroic" Chris rapes his little sister and then pesters her for years until she agrees to pretend to be his wife, reminiscent of grandfather Malcolm raping his stepmother, imprisoning her, and taking her baby.
 * Please: it's not the place to give your opinion about the novel. Not a forum. It's only to discuss the article here.

Everything released after Andrews' death is pure Neiderman. Trust me.

I'm not a Wiki user but I must say that this article has several inaccuracies. Blaming Neiderman for the new series changes violates NPOV and also he has referred these complaints to his publisher as he meets their demands.


 * It's very possible all is from Neiderman, but it's not really the place here to decide, or to blame her family to be not very moral.

Was there really a V.C. Andrews?
Did she exist? An interesting website challenges whether there really was a Virginia Cleo Andrews. For some odd reason, the site is blacklisted by wikipedia. http://www. ishipress.com/andrews.htm AaronCBurke 22:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The fact that there is no biographical article on V.C. Andrews says a lot.Wellesradio (talk) 03:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Wellesradio

Accidentally deleted?
I don't know whether the page was deleted or what- V.C. Andrews just redirects here but *here* is just a "Wikipedia has no page with this name" page. :/ except the discussion's obviously intact.

Might be a bug.

Restructuring the novel and series pages
I am a little concerned at the multiplication of information between pages concerning the works of Virginia Andrews. Quite rightly there is this main page - Virginia C. Andrews - for information about the author and links to her major works. There are then individual pages for a fair few of the novels - all fine, the more the merrier. But there are also a series of pages - Dollanganger Series, Landry Series, The Casteel Series - which index and summarise each of the 'series' of her works but add no overview analysis of the series as a whole. At the moment these merely repeat the information from each of the individual novel articles.

Suggestion 1: I suggest that under each series title on the main Virginia C. Andrews page there is a a brief introduction to each book series, then the links will take the reader through to each individual novel article. The current "series" pages should then either be deleted (my preference as some don't even meet article naming criteria) or redirected back to the main author page.

Suggestion 2: There is great potential to bring up the standard of all the novel pages. The novel pages all need to have infoboxes done to the same style, short and to the point plot summaries (at the moment some don't meet wikipedia guidelines for fiction articles and could be considered to breaching copyright see WP:FICT and WP:WAF due to the length of their plot summaries) and some analysis (although that would need to be sourced). Madmedea 22:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Anybody with me? Or more to the point anybody against me? Madmedea 22:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I support you on both suggestions. Though at the moment I don't have much time to restructure or add much to the articles, sorry. Roaming27 01:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've started this work but anybody else feel free to jump in Madmedea 16:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Bold text== Spoiler warning ==

I added a spoiler warning, but not sure if I put it in the right place. Roaming27 06:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Madmedea, thank you for re-locating the spoiler warning. It looks much better now  :-)  Roaming27 22:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I am hoping that someone will expand the entries for the Cutler series books that are stubs, ie Secrets of the Morning and Twilight's Child. I can't do it myself because I haven't read them in fifteen years and don't own anymore; that's why I came to Wikipedia to refresh and relive the memories...

Corrections and Additions?
Attic Whispers has been changed to Secrets in the Shadows. It is confirmed by www.simonsays.com/vcandrews.

Why not add the movie adaptation section since they already produced flowers in the attic and rain and will start on ruby.

Also why not added "upcoming titles" section? There is an upcoming title: Delia's Crossing.

Bluerocketpower 16:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Gods of Green Mountain
According to the Complete V.C. Andrews web site, this was written in 1972. It is currently only available in e-book format. It is not known whether it will ever be published in print.

Links on page
Most of the links, particularly the book titles, do not go to anything remotely related to V. C. Andrews's books. Some go to disambiguation, others just go to strange places. I don't know how to fix it. Mishka.medvezhonok (talk) 00:32, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Updating?
Seems to me that the synopsis of some of these books could be updated. It sounds like a brief description was written prior to the books coming out, but now that they are they haven't been expanded upon? Anyone care to fill in the details? (I would but I haven't read the books yet so I don't know what they're about!!) Pheebalicious (talk) 12:28, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Real person or media creation?
Someone could be forgiven for reading this and not getting that the majority of these books have nothing to do with the woman who this article is supposedly about. This article is a real shocking example of the wikipedia phenomenon of the public press release, at least in its current state. Does someone have the time or inclination to put in a total overhaul that addresses VC Andrews the person versus V.C. Andrews the multi-platform media creation? Seanmercy (talk) 17:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Biography Page
Shouldn't this page focus more on V.C. Andrews the person? Yes, her stories are the main reason why people are searching, but she didn't even write half of these books herself. Maybe the ones that we know were not written during her lifetime could be put on Neidermans' page, with a brief mention on V.C. Andrews page that they are published under her name. Lorilei Mackenzie (talk) 03:16, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Useful source article
I haven't the time to directly incorporate it right now, but this lengthy investigation on Buzzfeed contains a lot of useful material that could be handy in enhancing this article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/the-ghost-of-vc-andrews-the-life-death-and-afterlife-of-the

Repetitive themes
Instead of listing the various books, I was expecting some analysis of the various themes in the books and possibly commentary on them: things like abuse, abandonment, pedophilia, and incest. NONE of which blip on the page. These books go quite a bit beyond “gothic” and honestly the fact that they are missing leads credence to the idea that the whole page is being manipulated by commercial forces. 2600:1700:F90:6950:91C4:428B:1C1B:AD29 (talk) 15:38, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Section 3.1 By V. C. Andrews and Andrew Neiderman is misleading.
Section 3.2 (and beyond) lists only works written by Neiderman; Section 3.1 implies that each item was written by both. To maintain parallelism, there should be a 3.1 section listed first that shows the novels written by Andrews herself. The series description can be in that section, and in the following 3.2 section for those finished by Neiderman, just the novel titles can be listed. Section 3.3 would then be all the novels written by Neiderman alone. The alternative is to have one list (remove the headings) and indicate the authorship after each novel title. But as it stands, some of the novels listed in section 3.1 are clearly NOT by Neiderman. Or change section 3.1 to "By V.C. Andrews and by Andrew Neiderman."


 * 3.1 By V. C. Andrews and Andrew Neiderman
 * 3.1.1 The Dollanganger Family Series
 * 3.1.2 The Audrina Series
 * 3.1.3 The Casteel Family Series
 * 3.2 By Andrew Neiderman
 * 3.2.1 The Cutler Family Series

• Bobsd • (talk) 08:23, 31 January 2023 (UTC)