This crime, perpetrated in the town of Amstetten, 93 miles outside of Vienna, was only discovered because Elisabeth's 19-year-old daughter, Kerstin, became so seriously ill that she had to go to the hospital. A DNA test done on Kersten showed that Josef was her biological father, and that set off an investigation that uncovered Josef's "house of horrors," as many papers are calling it. One of the more bizarre aspects of the gruesome tale is that Josef's wife, Elisabeth's mother Rosemarie, reportedly didn't know about what was going on in her cellar, and thought the three children that she and Josef were raising above ground were left on their doorstep by the still-"missing" Elisabeth.

The case is somewhat of a national embarrassment for Austria, as in 2006, it was discovered that a woman named Natascha Kampusch had been held in a cellar for 8 years by an abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, who had kidnapped her when she was 10 years old. Austrian newspaper Der Standard said in an op-ed about the crimes, "The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong."

All six of the children — three boys and three girls — who were raised in the Fritzl's household are now in the care of authorities. There was a seventh child, who was the twin of another one of the children, but it died shortly after birth and was thrown into an incinerator by Josef. Police spokesman Franz Polzer told the BBC, "[The children] are being cared for individually - those between 12 and 16 years of age who grew up with their grandparents, and two boys who, when they came out yesterday with their mother, saw the daylight for the first time in their lives."

Austrian 'Hid Daughter In Cellar' [BBC]
Austrian Detectives Study Cellar [BBC]
Austrian Admits 24-year Abuse Of Daughter In Cellar [Reuters]
'House of Horrors' Father Confesses [CNN]

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer/reviewer/blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'My Sweet Audrina', V.C. Andrews' X-rated, 1982 gothic horror novel in which Audrina Adare, an innocent, is Desperately Seeking Sister.

For a three-month span in my early twenties, when I was under the profound misimpression I was an appropriate candidate for a PhD in English literature, I was obsessed with writing a paper on the narrative conceit of what, in a sort of pertinent Q.E.D., I went around calling "The Man You Seek is Yourself." The most obvious example of my pet trope is Oedipus, who is so busy killing his father and sleeping with his mother he doesn't realize he is killing his father and sleeping with his mother, but you see it in mysteries everywhere, from Mary Higgins Clark's Where Are the Children to No Way Out, a.k.a. Last Decent Costner. While reading most mysteries feels like having a scatter of jigsaw pieces suddenly fuse into a picture with a satisfying click, the TMYSIY™ theme is closer to trying to locate, with increasing irritation, the weird corner piece with some blue cloud stuff in one corner and half the villager's hat along the edge, then realizing you've been holding it in your hands the whole time.

SO. Although I would like to attribute my obsession TMYSIY™ with my youthful perusals of Sophocles and attendant ancients, upon rereading the work in question, I must now conclude my obsession with the theory originated with My Sweet Audrina.

For those of you unfamiliar with V.C. Andrews' oeuvre (and pity you, poor souls!), she can best be described as the occultress of the way-too-familiar family, which, in her world, is a cloying blind, a knot of secrets in which sensual spills over into the actionable in fairly short order. Instead of pedestrian pancake-slicing, in an Andrews creation, breasts jiggle ominously, bottoms are spanked until they are duly red, and flat chests grow into buds grow into full, swollen breasts against which men of all ages are helpless, especially if they are genetically linked to the breasts in question.

The Andrews heroine with whom most of you are likely familiar, is, of course, Cathy of Flowers in the Attic's Dollenganger clan, a sister so unfortunate as to be locked up with her brother long enough to imprint herself on his pre-pubescent psyche, thus ruining him for other women forever. On a purely Best-in-Waitingroom level, I have always favored Heaven of the Casteel clan, pure "hill trash" whose violet eyes and teeny waist propel her firmly out of Appalachia. But Audrina, the 9-year-old with a Swiss-cheese memory, "prismlike", "chameleon" hair and, uh, violet eyes, always seemed the youthful template for these creations, a standalone whose story could be taken as a long exercise in how to write a 400-page book in which 90% of the events occur in one house.

When we meet Audrina Whitefern Adare, she is a lonely child living in the shadow of her older sister, who has died in apparently horrendous but unknown circumstances. With her in the huge, rambling mausoleum referenced above is her Papa, a rakish tycoon, her mother, the beautiful Lucky, her dour aunt Ellsbeth, and Ellsbeth's daughter, Vera, a venomous slattern who is BAD NEWS BEARS for all involved.

Audrina is tortured by the fact that she has no memories of any of her childhood, and cannot keep track of time, finding that months have passed when she thinks only a week has gone by. Vera, of course, gives her hell about this, and also about the fact that Audrina is the great favorite of the household, while her own mother can barely tolerate her, to say nothing of the uncle and aunt upon whom they both depend. Audrina is also somewhat rattled by the fact that her father is given to locking her in her dead sister's room and making her rock in her dead sister's chair, apparently to access some special "gift", although Audrina only sees visions of being horribly ravished and left for dead under a "golden raintree", which sounds kind of like some eco-friendly detergent but is apparently not.

Into this mix soon come Audrina's love interest, Arden — yup, he's named "Arden" — as well as Arden's mother, Billie, a legless former skating champion who is shockingly beautiful with skin like porcelain. (In Andrews-land, all are preternaturally beautiful until you find their secret flaw: for Audrina, the aforementioned memory loss; Vera, bones so fragile they break is she falls; Lucky, a heart condition; and Sylvia, Audrina's retarded little sister, who is the cause of Lucky's dying in childbirth. Even Arden—so dedicated to Audrina he acquires a symbolic name to keep it at the top of your mind!—will turn out to be not what he seems.)

But in between finding out the grand mystery at the center of the novel, there's a lot of positively filthy stuff to keep you alert. Here's Papa castigating Lucky for her behavior at a dinner party he forces her to have in her sixth month of pregnancy:

"You flirted, Lucietta. Flirted and in your condition, too. You cuddled so close to the teenage piano player on the bench you seemed blended into one person. You jiggled! Your nipples could be seen."

"I have seen a naked man, Audrina, a real one, not just a picture or an illustration. He is so hairy. You'd never suspect just how hairy by looking at him fully clothed. His hair travels from his chest down past his navel and runs into a point and keeps going and getting busher until—"

"Stop! I don't want to hear more."

"But I want you to hear more. I want you to know what you're missing. It's wonderful to have all those nine inches stabbing into me. Did you hear me, Audrina? I measured it...almost nine inches, and it's swollen and hard."

"They were in their underclothes, Arden's legless mother and my father, playing intimately with each other."

"Ellsbeth," shrieked Momma after some insult about the house she loved, "the problem with you is you're so damn jealous our father loved me better. You sit there and say ugly things about the house because you wish to God it belonged to you. Just as you cry your heart out each night, sleeping alone in your bed, or lying there restless and awake, jealous again because I always got what you wanted—when you could have had what I have if you'd kept your damned big mouth shut!"

"And you certainly know when to open your big mouth, Lucietta!" barked my aunt. "All your life wandering through this mausoleum and gushing about its beauty. Of course our father left this house to you and not to me. You made me want to vomit you were so sweet. You set out to rob me of everything I wanted. Even when my boyfriends came to call on me, you were there smiling and flirting. You even flirted with our father, flattering him so much you made me seem cold and indifferent. But I did all the work around here, and I still do! You prepare meals and you think that's enough. Well, it's not enough! I do everything else. I'm sick and tired of being everybody's slave! And if that's not enough, you're teaching your daughter your tricks!"

Oh, also: AUDRINA REALLY IS THE FIRST AUDRINA, AND HER FATHER MADE HER BELIEVE SHE WAS HER OWN SISTER AFTER SHE WAS GANG-RAPED.

AND: Vera turns out to be Papa's OTHER daughter by aunt Ellsbeth, has a big old affair with Arden, and, though Sylvia is suspected, is revealed to be the murderer of her own mother and Arden's mother Billie, whom she pushes down the stairs.

ALSO: Turns out Vera TOTALLY set those boys on the original Audrina to rape her all those years ago, because she was way jealous about the Papa thing.

Whatever! You know you were just going to reread it for all the "swollen breast buds" parts, anyway.

My Sweet Audrina [Amazon]
Lizzie Skurnick [The Old Hag]

Earlier:The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty
•The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits
•The Witch Of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!
•Are You In The House Alone? One Out Of Four, Maybe More
•Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once A Week
• Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City
•My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today
•All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn
•Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care
•Little House In The Big Woods: I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon
•The Grounding Of Group Six: Have Fun At School, Kids, And Don't Forget To Die
•Are You There Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan

So, we're curious. What kinds of books did you guys love as kids? And also, isn't that picture of Judy Blume really hot? The woman is pushing 70! Writing about masturbating teens must be amazing for your skin!

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Well-Insulated 'Little House' [Washington Post]
Judy Blume's Official Website [Judyblume.com]