Two stars for decent writing, zero stars for plot and characters. Everything about the story itself just felt flat and clumsy to me. The only character I found remotely interesting was Justine, and the only romance I cared about was between Justine and Rainer. And that was only in the last seventy-five or so pages. Reading the rest of the book just felt like a chore. I hated Ralph. He seemed manipulative and sketchy and at the same time didn't really feel like a real human being. I was super creeped out by his "love" for Meggie. Meggie herself I didn't like at all. She seemed so vapid, and most of her dreams consisted of marriage and babies, babies, babies. Urghhhhh.The dialogue felt stilted and overly formal, even for the time period in which the book took place. The story didn't feel at all real to me. Despite the religious aspects of the book (Ralph is a freaking priest for God's sake) it didn't make me think about religion or spirituality or Catholicism in any meaningful way. So yeah, I'm quite disappointed with this book. I think I'll stick to The Poisonwood Bible and Gone with the Wind and The Legend of the Fire Horse Woman for my family epics.

I really enjoy epic stories and sagas, big sweeping stories that enmesh the reader in the characters and their lives, and make the reader more than just a bystander watching the action, but a sort of participant. We want things to go a certain way, we want things to go well, because we care about the characters, and we have invested our hopes in them. Colleen McCullough has an almost magical skill in making her characters real and believable and true. That is what I love most about reading, and why I love certain authors above others. Where another author's character may be interesting and dynamic and exciting, they are still just a character. McCullough, and a few other authors, has the ability to make her characters, fictional though they may be, reach out of the pages and touch us. The characters she creates no longer feel like words on a page; they follow me around, pry their way into my dreams, make me wonder how they are spending their days when I'm not able to read about them. I love when I can just plunge into a book and live in it... To that end, McCullough even seemed to make Australia itself a living, breathing character. It's described beautifully, and is as unpredictable as any human character she's introduced here.This is the third McCullough book that I've read, and I feel like she must have spent an inordinate amount of her life just observing life and people. She brings us the stories of the people she creates, but, even though we're following an omniscient narrator, we can only see, feel and hear so much of our subject's lives. We can only reach so far into their hearts for the mysteries that elude us, because, like real people, they don't have open-book hearts and minds. But it feels like we're able to see into their souls, because McCullough understands humanity itself, and presents us with general truths that feel like intimate secrets. This story centers around the Cleary family and what comes to be their farm Drogheda. We meet Meggie Cleary as a 4 year old birthday girl, and then follow her through six decades of life, love and loss. Her family is a strange, introverted male-centric one. Meggie is the only girl in a rather large clan of brothers: Frank, Bob, Jack, Hughie, Stuart, Hal, James and Patrick. She learns early to be self-reliant, because in her family there is not a lot of use for girls. Her mother is very closed-mouthed, very closed-off, and works her fingers to the bone to keep the household running, because her father has very distinct ideas about the differences between the sexes - housework and child-rearing is woman's domain only, and farming and work is man's domain only. The two are not to mix or cross paths. This is not to say that Paddy Cleary was a bad or harsh man, because he was not, but he just had certain ideas of how life is, and his word was law as the Man of the House. Their lives ease somewhat after moving to Australia, but with the move comes a new set of struggles. Meggie meets and loves Father Ralph, the Catholic priest in the area. At ten, it's an innocent, adoring love, which provides her with attention that she's neglected in other areas of her life. Meggie is never taught about puberty, or where babies come from, or many other things that girls need to know. She's generally kept in the back hall closet of life. Not maliciously, but because in the Cleary family, a daughter has to fend for herself. Boys are the goal, because boys are the workers, the backbone of the family, and the genes that allow the name and lineage to be carried on. Because of Meggie's neglect, Father Ralph has the responsibility of teaching her the things that a mother should. As she grows up, the innocent love she holds for Father Ralph turns into more, and causes both parties to struggle, because what we want most is often what is the most forbidden. Father Ralph is probably my favorite character here. I am not Catholic, and a lot of the Catholic faith is a mystery to me. But his struggles of conscience and faith, which force him to choose between the love he feels and the vows he made, in my mind make him the most interesting character of them all. I think that probably most priests have this crisis at some point in their lives... do they regret their decision to forfeit their manhood for the priesthood? Are they strong enough to resist temptation? I'm glad that we got to see things here from both sides - not only Father Ralph's struggle, but Meggie's struggles as well. There was a lot in this book that reminded me of other classic literature. Father Ralph's struggles and Meggie's desire for him brought to mind Hester and Rev. Dimmesdale from "The Scarlet Letter". Justine, Meggie's daughter with Luke O'Neill, reminded me quite a bit of Jo March from "Little Women" in her feminist, proud, ambitious and take no prisoners approach to life. But in both cases, the similarities are only surface level, because these characters are far less perfect, less romantic, and more real than those they bring to mind from other books. There is more than a little heartbreak in this book and I will admit that I shed a few tears. But one thing that rather grated on my nerves was that I could always tell when tragedy was about to strike. It seemed that for every loss, there was a hopeful build-up so that the fall would be that much greater. I felt that it was obvious and I rolled my eyes more than once because of it. So that's why I've taken off a star for this book. But that being said, the depictions of the reactions to the losses were very real and honest. I just wish that the red herring ploy wasn't so obvious. Anyway, I did truly enjoy this book, as I have enjoyed the other McCulloughs that I've read. I do plan on reading more of her books in the future, and would certainly recommend this one.

This was a reread for me. When I read it some 30 years ago I didn't get to finish it because someone stole it off of my work desk. I had to know the ending. It is just so epic. If you love a big sweeping saga, this is a must.

This is one of the books I scorned for years. Romantic fiction - I used to think - is fluff for bimbos. Since I consider myself literate and intelligent (yeah, really!) I wouldn't touch this sort of book. Bizarrely, I was not ashamed to read even the most extreme - and extremely inane - crime fiction. ("After all, we all need to relax now and then." Hmmmph!)Well, now I'm older and wiser and more inclined to read books for enjoyment than for the pleasure of imagining how people will be impressed when they scan my bookshelves, and since I have realised that every crime that can be imagined has been done to death already (sorry!), I have started to read books I wouldn't have touched in the past. In other words, chic lit, romantic fiction, historical fiction and the like.And I've been discovering plenty of good reads in the process. This is one of them. It's a good story that catches your interest right from the start. It provides insights into the difficult lives of people on a big Australian farm in the last century (the 20th, I mean). As a love story it is engaging. The characters are memorable. The writing is not bad. The plot is interesting and the structure is excellent. Not a book to win literary prizes, perhaps, but a far less silly way to pass a few hours pleasantly than reading psycho-killer nonsense.In any case, it was a famous book in its day, and I'm glad that now at last I am in a position to pass judgement on the book, rather than its readers.

The thorn birds, Colleen McCulloughThe Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel by the Australian author Colleen McCullough. Set primarily on Droghedaa fictional sheep station in the Australian Outback named after Drogheda, Irelandthe story focuses on the Cleary family and spans the years 1915 to 1969. The novel is the best selling book in Australian history, and has sold over 33 million copies worldwide. Meghann "Meggie" Cleary, a four-year-old girl living in New Zealand in the early twentieth century, is the only daughter of Paddy, an Irish farm labourer and Fee, his harassed but aristocratic wife. Meggie is a beautiful child with curly red-gold hair but receives little coddling and must struggle to hold her own. Her favourite brother is the eldest, Frank, a rebellious young man who is unwillingly preparing himself for the blacksmith's trade. He is much shorter than his other brothers, but very strong. Unlike the other Clearys, he has black hair and eyes, believed to be inherited from his Maori great-great-grandmother.: : : 2006 : : : 1367 791 1368 1369 ) - 1369 1371 1379 - 1391 .