The Thorn Birds

Author: Colleen McCullough
Genre: Family Saga / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 1977
Pages: 560
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: The Thorn Birds is a chronicle of three generations of Clearys - an indomitable clan of ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrates their family. It is a poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit. Most of all, it is the story of the Cleary's only daughter, Meggie, and the haunted priest, Father Ralph di Bricassart - and the intense joining of two hearts and souls over a lifetime, a relationship that dangerously oversteps sacred boundaries of ethics and dogma.

Review: I have never met a family saga that I didn't love, until I read The Thorn Birds. I chose this for a January Reading Challenge and the prompt was, "a book written the year you were born." I had seen The Thorn Birds mentioned with rave reviews many times in various FB reading groups, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity. 

First and foremost, I didn't care for the format/layout of this saga. Rather than a fluid novel, the book is divided into "books" by character with no common theme or plot to tie them together. Throughout the novel events take place and impact a character, but the same events seem to have no lasting impact or are never mentioned again. Characters are killed off at will to fit the narrative and again, no thought or attention is paid to them again in the context of another's character's struggle or growth. This is a novel that wants to be cutting edge, and maybe at the time it was because of the few scenes of (for the time, I suspect) graphic sex, but it translates into a soap opera, and not a compelling one at that.

To be fair, this was written in a different time and place for a different reader, but I can honestly say that even acknowledging that fact, the novel is still problematic.