Seeds of Yesterday (Dollanger Saga) (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "And so it came to pass the summer when I was fifty-two and Chris was fifty-four that our mother's promise of riches, made long ago..." (more)
Key Phrases: particular ballet, swan bed, Foxworth Hall, New York, Bartholomew Winslow (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Viginia Andrews: 'Beautifully written, macabre and thoroughly nasty! it is evocative of the nasty fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood and The Babes in the Wood, with a bit of Victorian Gothic thrown in. ! What does shine through is her ability to see the world through a child's eyes' Daily Express 'Makes horror irresistible' Glasgow Sunday Mail 'A gruesome saga! the storyline is compelling, many millions have no wish to put this down' Ms London 'There is strength in her books -- the bizarre plots matched with the pathos of the entrapped' The Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

The final, haunting novel, in the extraordinary story that has enthralled millions!

The horror began with Flowers in the Attic, the terrifying tale of four innocent children locked away from the world by a cruel mother.

The shocking fury continued with Petals on the Wind and If There be Thorns. Now V.C. Andrews has created the last dark chapter in the strange, chilling tale of passion and peril.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (November 15, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671729489
• ISBN-13: 978-0671729486
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,683 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Family Reunion From Hell Is Boring, April 1, 2006

By	C. Chow (Leesburg VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

`Seeds of Yesterday' features the return of Cathy and Chris, the greatest lovers in the history of literature. Now middle aged they're having a family reunion. You'd think by now they'd be hiding in a cave in Tibet trying to avoid their family like the plague they are. The signs of doom are obvious.

They are meeting at the now rebuilt haunted mansion Foxworth Hall. (Doom) Their eldest son Jory had a promising career as a dancer but has been rendered a paraplegic. (Doom) Jory's wife Melodie is not supporting him and she's pregnant. (Doom) Their second son Bart has been released from an asylum and now has total control of the family's billions. (Doom) Their promiscuous 16 year old daughter Cindy is bringing home a new boyfriend. (Doom) Joel, presumed dead 60 years ago has reemerged with sinister motives. (Doom) They call him "Uncle Joel" although the Foxworth family tree is so bent I think technically he's more a cousin.

Has fate ever been so tempted? Everything imaginable goes wrong, mostly Bart reverting to his psychotic behavior. Joel also goes on lengthy fire and brimstone sermons about all the incest going on, blah blah blah, we've been listening to this for the last 4 books, get over it. NONE of this is interesting. Essentially these characters have the same argument about how much they hate each other for 380 pages of the 400 page book. This is not an exaggeration but an exact figure.

At one point Cathy comments "This cannot go on any longer." But it does. This one argument just drags on and on. She also states, "Nothing that has happened in our lives has been coincidence." She's right; it's a result of her stupidity. Why is the family putting up with Bart's psychotic violence?

After Cathy and Chris's first adventures in `Flowers in the Attic' and `Pedals On the Wind' anything that could happen afterwards seems passé. A nuclear holocaust? Alien invasion? A comet on a collision course with earth? Cathy and Chris have faired far worse.

Like most fans of VC Andrews' Dollanganger saga I felt an obligation to finish the series, and after all `Seeds of Yesterday' does star two of literature's most interesting characters Cathy and Chris. I want to relieve you of this burden, YOU ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO READ THIS BOOK.

As much as we love Cathy and Chris, we do not need to follow their lives to the last breath. We are only interested in the exciting elements of their life. All that happens in `Seeds of Yesterday' is their deaths. They die, everybody dies of something someday. Fans agree that their story should have concluded with the ending of `Pedals On the Wind'. They lived happily ever after.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Look a Little Deeper, August 3, 2006

By	S. Starkey "Bookophile" (Newport News, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I almost didn't buy the book because so many Dollanganger fans seemed to hate it so much, but my need to see the saga to the end won over. I am very glad, because I would have missed out by not reading the book. I was pleasantly surprised by what I think is a very fitting end to the Dollanganger story.

Throughout the story, Bart is very much the evil incarnate that most readers describe him as. I thought that his character would keep growing more and more despicable, and that the story would end with him systematically destroying everyone and becoming Malcolm Foxworth all over again. It didn't happen that way. The death of Chris seemed the perfect vindication for him. He could easily have responded with the ultimate righteous indignation. Instead he felt grief and regret, and it caused him to reexamine everything about himself, and all he had been and done. Despite all the pain and ugliness that had surrounded him for years, he had kept a stranglehold on control. Death was not in his control. He had tried always to hate Chris, but he loved him, and having someone he loved completely and irreversibly gone from his life was the jolt he needed to come to his senses. He finally understood the importance of love, when his love for Chris overpowered everything he thought he believed. He chose to love his family, to believe in a God of love and compassion, and to use his money and power for good.

I did grow weary of the Cindy/Bart antagonism. Cindy was indeed an unlikeable character, but she was an honest character. She was a very accurate portrayal of someone who has been overindulged and overparented by misguided good intentions.

Many readers were unhappy about the deaths of Chris and Cathy. Well, no one lives forever. I think that Chris and Cathy died honorably, him nurturing life, her nurturing love. Cathy finally got what she needed in the end; proof that faith does not always end in tragedy. She never stopped loving Bart, never gave up on him, no matter how much he deserved it most of the time. Had she lost faith and turned her back on him, he would never have become who he became in the end. Chris and Cathy never completely escaped the attic. They remained marked by their past. They made many mistakes throuout their lives, and they were not perfect parents. But they persevered, did the best that they could. They were loving parents, and the children eventually grew into good people. The Foxworth cycle was successfully broken, and I think that that was all that Chris and Cathy truly wanted in life. Sadly, it took Chris dying to make that happen (as tragedy often preceeds triumph) but Cathy (who needed it most of all) lived to see it.

In her lyrical, almost ethereal writing style, with healthy doses of poetic lisence and fantasy, V.C. Andrews created a very unique, well-developed saga at the heart of which is the very essence of humanism. Each character was faced with challenges, and many of them failed cataclysmically. But the best of the human spirit did prevail in the end. Bravo!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The sleeping dog that refuses to lie, October 25, 1998

By A Customer

The bad news is, "Seeds of Yesterday", the fourth and final installment of the Dollanganger series, can't hold a candle to "Petals on the Wind", the one book in the series that showcased V. C. Andrews' storytelling ability to its best advantage. The good news is, "Seeds" still outshines its predecessors, "Flowers", and "Thorns", which were respectively, a slow-moving exercise in inertia, and a rehash of the same.

Granted, the plot of "Seeds" verges on downright silly: Momma has left her immense wealth to her favorite grandson, Bart, who plans to restore Foxworth Hall in all its glory--and horror (ooh!). Although Cathy and Chris (who still stubbornly refuse to stop "living in sin" and thereby replaying that dreary old storyline) are reluctant to revisit their haunted past, they do so, for Bart's sake. Big mistake--the minute they set foot at Foxworth Hall, all kinds of disasters befall them--the reappearance of a seemingly benign yet sinister "long-lost uncle", a tragic accident, betrayal, and DANGER! Yet, for all of its hokey pretensions, "Seeds" has two factors in its favor: 1) Cathy once again emerges as a strong character, instead of the clueless ditz she was in "Thorns". 2) Bart is a fascinating study of a man who is still seeking his identity after his tortured past. In some ways, he is still the lonely, vulnerable 10-year-old from "Thorns", starved for love and the lion's share of attention. He is also the most fun character, since he is allowed to lash out at his family for their various transgressions, which is his way of turning his own self-hatred inside out.

There are still moments in the book when it would have made more sense to have V. C. Andrews tell the story in the ominscient third-person, because it would have added more detail, and developed Bart further as a character. Instead, because she has again chosen to have Cathy narrate the story, Cathy is more or less forced to eavesdrop to figure out what dastardly deeds are going on behind her back (Mata Hari had nothing on this woman). The other drawbacks are that once again, Chris is ridiculously benevolent, patient and optimistic, and does not find anything furtive about the mysterious uncle (after all of these years, does he STILL not have a clue?). Cindy, the adoptee, is the standard V. C. Andrews "Street Tart" character, albeit a less obvious one, since she looks "blonde and angelic". In any case, she's a mere repeat of Yolanda in "Petals", Vera in "My Sweet Audrina", and Fanny in the "Casteel" series. Jory is essentially the same character as Chris (I defy anyone to read the dialogue given to both characters and differentiate between the two). As Jory's "perpetually in denial" wife, Melodie had potential as a character, but V. C. Andrews doesn't utilize it; all we see is Cathy's point of view. How much more interesting it would have been to pursue Bart, Melodie and even Cindy on their own; instead, Cathy eavesdrops, as mentioned before, or Cindy relates the story, much in the same style as Chris in "Flowers". Overall, I would give this book lower marks than "Petals" for its villains (even at their worst, Bart and Joel can't hold a candle to Momma and THE GRANDPARENTS at their best). However, the plot moves along, largely thanks to Bart, and does not feel like a chore to slog through, as did "Flowers" and "Thorns".