Buried Blossoms

This novel, concerning the horrifying fall and decline of a proud and wealthy family, comes across as morbidly titillating. Spanning from the mid-1890s to 1945, this saga concerns the Hazeltines, who hold themselves aloof from the commonfolk in their small New England town. This isolation intensifies when Mr. Hazeltine, distraught over his fifth child's stillbirth and the failure of his horseless carriage business, commits suicide. Left behind is his fragile wife Olivia and their children: oldest child Francine, cold, sadistic Paul, and the two youngest, Margaret and Constance. As Olivia's mental state decreases(and her morphine use and drinking increases), Paul comes to dominate the household, cruelly lording his power over everyone, especially Francine, whom the adolescent Paul holds a most unnatural interest in. Fleeing this nightmare with a travelling peddlar, Francine makes her way to a big city, where she becomes swept up in the theater and becomes an actress of some reknown. Meanwhile, the years pass at the Hazeltine mansion, which has grown increasing decrepit. Olivia has died (and been deposited in the ice house by her thoughtful children)and Paul, Margaret, and Constance live like hermits. Still following their dead father's edict of non-fraternization with those that are "beneath" them, Paul, Margaret, and Constance take comfort only in (and with) each other, venturing forth occassionally to shop for groceries amid the sneers and whispers of the townspeople. But Francine has not forgotten her sisters. She promised them to come back, and she does. But the self-contained trio have some most unpleasant plans for her . . .Some might compare this gothic sleazefest with V.C. Andrews' books, in a roundabout way. The sheer degree of degenerate and insane behavior is enough for a dozen of Andrews' books. The shocking scene in which the returned Francine is drugged and then violated by Paul makes one's skin crawl. She escapes, but will literally bear the scars of her encounter the rest of her life. And the eventual deaths of the three remaining Hazeltines, physically decaying like the mouldering tomb of a house in which they live, are both grotesquely sad and morbidly disturbing. Lewis makes great use of images that convey the moral and psychological decay of this family: cracked dishes, broken bed springs, sagging and dusty furniture, dining room tables heaped with years' accumulations of newspapers. Everything is coated with a patina of rottenness, but its impossible to look away from these three freaks masquerading as a civilized, proper family. Recommended if you like dark old house or gothic horror stories with a twisted of the perverted

This is really an interesting novel and I cannot believe no one has reviewed it before. It is horrifying and as good as some of the Clive Barker and Steve K. books, but without the supernatural. These are real people living a unholy life. This is a really evil story, but interesting. If the author reads this, I would like to hear from him.