GENRE: Nonfiction/Biography
MY GRADE: A
SYNOPSIS: Best known for her internationally, multi-million-copy bestselling novel Flowers in the Attic, Cleo Virginia Andrews lived a fascinating life. Born to modest means, she came of age in the American South during the Great Depression and faced a series of increasingly challenging health issues. Yet, once she rose to international literary fame, she prided herself on her intense privacy.
Now, The Woman Beyond the Attic aims to connect her personal life with the public novels for which she was famous. Based on Virginia’s own letters, and interviews with her dearest family members, her long-term ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman tells Virginia’s full story for the first time.
MY THOUGHTS: The author died from breast cancer in 1986, just seven years after becoming famous with her first novel, Flowers in the Attic. Andrew Neiderman, who's been ghost writing under her name since 1988 and writing under his own name since 1972, did a great job of compiling what was known of her. He had help from her relatives who let him read their private letters from her. The biography part of this book is only 150 pages long. The next 90 pages is her unedited manuscript for her novel, "The Obsessed", which I didn't read as I don't think that should have been in here. It should have been released as an e-book or something instead and is irrelevant to this biography, in my opinion. Lyrics to a song she'd written and a few poems are published here. There's also a bibliography and index. There's a 16-page section in the middle of the book of black and white photos of her, and of letters she sent to others.
Virginia seems to have been very close to her relatives and seemed like a nice, friendly person, very talkative and clearly very creative. Articles say she's private but I don't think she is. She didn't seem to have a life outside of her writing career, no loves or children to talk about, so it didn't leave her with much to talk about outside of her career. When she was diagnosed with cancer, I don't think anyone outside of her family knew about it until the end. That should have been made clear in this book, who all knew she was dying, such as anyone from the publishing word, and how long she had cancer before dying from it. Virginia lied publicly about her age and also about how she came to be in a wheelchair, I'm not sure why she saw the need to do that. When she became wealthy after publishing her first novel, I wish she'd have separated from her mother a little. Her mother didn't seem like she had Virginia's best interests in mind. She seemed jealous of her and wanted her at home all the time, didn't want her to have a life outside of the one with her mother.
There's one very interesting thing in here to me. In 1982 she submitted a couple paragraphs of a gothic historical romance story called Love's Savage Desire to something called The Do-It-Yourself Romance. You can view my photos of it from inside the book here. I've never heard of that place and I can't find any information about it online. Was it an advertisment in magazines placed by a publishing house? Was it a magazine?
SYNOPSIS: Best known for her internationally, multi-million-copy bestselling novel Flowers in the Attic, Cleo Virginia Andrews lived a fascinating life. Born to modest means, she came of age in the American South during the Great Depression and faced a series of increasingly challenging health issues. Yet, once she rose to international literary fame, she prided herself on her intense privacy.
Now, The Woman Beyond the Attic aims to connect her personal life with the public novels for which she was famous. Based on Virginia’s own letters, and interviews with her dearest family members, her long-term ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman tells Virginia’s full story for the first time.
MY THOUGHTS: The author died from breast cancer in 1986, just seven years after becoming famous with her first novel, Flowers in the Attic. Andrew Neiderman, who's been ghost writing under her name since 1988 and writing under his own name since 1972, did a great job of compiling what was known of her. He had help from her relatives who let him read their private letters from her. The biography part of this book is only 150 pages long. The next 90 pages is her unedited manuscript for her novel, "The Obsessed", which I didn't read as I don't think that should have been in here. It should have been released as an e-book or something instead and is irrelevant to this biography, in my opinion. Lyrics to a song she'd written and a few poems are published here. There's also a bibliography and index. There's a 16-page section in the middle of the book of black and white photos of her, and of letters she sent to others.
Virginia seems to have been very close to her relatives and seemed like a nice, friendly person, very talkative and clearly very creative. Articles say she's private but I don't think she is. She didn't seem to have a life outside of her writing career, no loves or children to talk about, so it didn't leave her with much to talk about outside of her career. When she was diagnosed with cancer, I don't think anyone outside of her family knew about it until the end. That should have been made clear in this book, who all knew she was dying, such as anyone from the publishing word, and how long she had cancer before dying from it. Virginia lied publicly about her age and also about how she came to be in a wheelchair, I'm not sure why she saw the need to do that. When she became wealthy after publishing her first novel, I wish she'd have separated from her mother a little. Her mother didn't seem like she had Virginia's best interests in mind. She seemed jealous of her and wanted her at home all the time, didn't want her to have a life outside of the one with her mother.
There's one very interesting thing in here to me. In 1982 she submitted a couple paragraphs of a gothic historical romance story called Love's Savage Desire to something called The Do-It-Yourself Romance. You can view my photos of it from inside the book here. I've never heard of that place and I can't find any information about it online. Was it an advertisment in magazines placed by a publishing house? Was it a magazine?
I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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