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My mom is not a big reader. So although she appreciated that I liked to read and understood its value, she wasn’t all that interested in it. She’d give whatever stack I got at the bookstore a cursory glance and that was that…which is how I read Flowers in the Attic in the fourth grade. And I know I’m not the only one who pored over this book of incest and attic imprisonment when I was barely old enough to walk home alone. But there were plenty of other books that I read as a kid that weren’t quite as inappropriate as FITA but still not the kind of thing you’d imagine a junior high schooler getting into.
Until last week, when I read Alafair Burke’s excellent thriller Long Gone, I had completely forgotten about my old obsession with Mary Higgins Clark. Looking back, I think she bridged the gap between young adult and adult literature for me perfectly for two reasons. First, though people very often got murdered in her books, they weren’t gory. Second, they were available in mass market at the local Pathmark drug store, which made them an easy jump price-wise for someone still living on a small allowance.
I still think about the plot of I’ll Be Seeing You every so often, but the others have completely faded from memory. Maybe I should get back into MHC? Have any of you ever returned to an old obsession and found that it held up?
