The Thorn Birds: A Beloved Epic Romance and Family Saga of Forbidden Love in the Australian Outback

I read this when it first came out, and loved it. Now, all these years later it is still a story for the ages. The characters are complex and compelling, the story is beautiful, the prose is amazing. It’s as good today as the first time I read it.

When writing, acting, music, and films had something to say and told us a story. I did not really understand the big deal about Barbara Stanwyck when I was 16 as I intensely watched this. 30 something years later, I began watching Turner Classic Movies and I taken the time to enjoy ALL of her films and I was made to appreciate the Thorn Birds even more. I felt for her soul all the way. She was in pain with love and lust and her eyes weren't old, her heart wasn't old, her desires weren't old, it was only her body. If Father Ralph met Stanwyck in her earlier day opposite Henry Fonda, I bet that Father De Brisscart would not have needed to feel pious and wholesome. I love Meg and Father's relationship the most. I had feels just like for much older men into their late 28s when I was 11 and in the 80s, it was a fantasy, but now it is a Scarlet Letter, a stalking and being a prisoner of life. Well executed film for TV and worth having in your permanent film collection. Also, I got the DVS version, but this does not matter, the seller was excellent and they did not disappoint, not a one, and also, the package was sealed in clear wrapping to show the care they took to sell this. Another awesome story from the 80s.....The book and the mini series will always be the best and not that new junk that they have the nerve to remake. Who ever remakes this should have "old Hollywood" return and break their knee caps and watch a LOT of excellent films so that they will learn how to cast, budget, use a camera, spend the money, and much more, It would be the best knee cap breaking these young Gen Y film makers can hope for. I really do mean break every bone in a dirt-bag's knee cap. No Joke. A great film or excellent performances would be left alone to enjoy and to savour. NO one should remake what has already been done. Gen Y...WHY? Watch this mini-series, it is better than a theatrical release and well worth keeping, I 'll never forget this from my HS teenage years. I loved those two together when Sidney Penny grows up and becomes Rachel Ward..now THAT is excellent casting. 80s women were real and beautiful, talented, not snotty and not blonde, dead goodness too many blondes, too loud and dress terrible for professionalism. Give us back the men who look like real men and women who inspired other women for being the strong silent type. Thank you Colleen MC Collough. You captured telling a story with Australian History, took our minds to a place we have never been before and created work for hundreds of perfectly, gorgeous talents people who did not need to be a ho or shout or to be on You Tube for attention. This was the real thing. Thank you. Buy it as the novel AND the film. either way, no waste of time shall you ever consider this art in motion to be. Long Live Rachel Wood and Richard Chamberlain in the film version and how Colleen pictured them exactly as they came to life on screen.

I was 11 years old in 1983, when the sweeping epic “The Thorn Birds” was made into a mini-series. I was too young to watch it, but I knew it was out there. Everyone was talking about it – Richard Chamberlain was too much of a heartthrob for me to miss it completely. It took me over 30 years, but I have finally read the book by Colleen McCullough, and it was well worth the wait. The book spans 54 years in the life of an Australian family, the Clearys, focusing on the story of daughter Meggie, who is 4 years old at the beginning of the book. The reader soon meets Father Ralph de Bricassart, an ambitious, handsome priest who is 24 years Meggie’s senior. Then begins an unlikely love story that spans over half a decade of love and pain. McCullough’s characters come alive in the book. As a reader, I quickly became invested in them, especially Meggie. Her young naïve way of seeing the world contrasted nicely with Father Ralph’s world weary perspective. By the time she was born he had seen and done too much; she was a light to him, fresh air after suffocating. Until she started to grow up. As she blossomed into a young lady, his pure love for her was challenged; one of the central struggles in the book is the war between Father Ralph’s manhood and his priesthood. Readers can plot the passage of time through the well-developed growth and changing of the characters; in contrast, the land that calls to them all, the station of Drogheda in Australia, barely changes. McCullough’s vivid descriptions evoke the beauty and the cycle of the land: from plenty to drought and back again. This dependable background allows the characters to change and develop, creating a beautiful storyline.

I read this book 40 years ago and loved it. I decided after reading some posts that said it was ‘cringe’ to today’s thinking, I should read it again. I did not find it ‘Cringe’ at all. Amazing story of 3 generations.

I read Thorn Birds in 1977 and liked it. But then my current book club selected it, and I read it again. I had forgotten the entire story. A young woman whose Irish family inherited a ranch in the Outback falls in love with a priest who has loved her since she was 10, but he continually leaves her to continue his priesthood, his first love and ambition. The priesthood requires him to remain celibate. She expects him to stay and he leaves her continually to return to his post, finally to Rome as an archbishop. She marries someone else and wants children. She resents Ralph, the priest, and wants his children. The story evolves over many years. The author's description of Australia is very vivid, through droughts and floods, sheep raising and kangaroos. You feel like you are there. The book is a quick read even though there are many pages. The author holds your attention throughout the story. It could have been written today, with some modern improvements. Highly recommended.

Beautiful copy

Thornbirds is long and detailed giving you the a initial to enter the spaces of Drogheda and the Clearys. You can see and feel Meggie Ralph Justine Fee Frank as you see Drogheda.

How do I even begin to review a book that ten years prior was the apitemy of romance? Yet, here we are. “The bird with a thorn in its breast follows an immutable law, it is driven by its knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant, the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come, it simply sings and sings until there is not life left to utter another note. But, when we put the thorns in out breasts, we know. We understand. And we still do it. Still, we do it.” That is the quote of all of this book that is over 25 years old. The tale is simple enough. A man a priest falls not in love with a woman, but with a woman to-be. In the battle she for his love only and his for loving God and woman and himself. You could wrap yourself in the knowledge that he is a priest, she is yet 6 when they meet. No, Colleen never writes of anything inappropriate when the characters start out but you see it coming. The way you see a storm on the horizon. You know when she is old enough with all of her heart she will give him the part of herself that no one really has but him. He will throw enough of himself into her to keep her love and a special place for himself away from the church. A secret child is born of this love. And as the families are born, grow, pass and change that enduring feeling of two people is what feeds the tale. My feelings about this book have changed over the years. Maybe being a childhood sa survivor and finally beginning the healing makes me wonder if perhaps this tale as innocent as I believe Colleen meant to be is for a time when a man who did not touch but lusted after a child in his own way was supposed to be ok. Even when everyone told him it was not. I can say the lack even in the updated copy and add not trigger warns was not ok. There is rape, abuse, tragedy, death, grooming, and violence in this book. It is an adult story for adult feelings. I can say it is no longer one of my favorite romance novels but I am glad I decided to read it again.

Beautifully written. Excellent book

I'd seen most of the tv series before I read the book, so I always have that wonderful theme running through my mind when I read it. Although some of the writing is a bit "clunky" at times, the characters are believable, the sort of people you can imagine meeting. Fiona, the matriarch, is a very closed-in woman who has no time for her only daughter, Megan. Paddy, the father, is a decent hard-working man who married Fi on her father's instruction when she became pregnant with another man's child. Paddy's sister, Mary, married well and became the owner of a vast estate to which Paddy brought his family to help manage the sheep station. Despite the antipathy between Paddy and Frank the eldest son, the family worked hard and settled in to the life. Meggie had little attention from her mother, but adored Frank who protected her from the younger brothers. Into this reasonably comfortable life came a charismatic priest, Father Ralph, who would affect Meggie's life from childhood to womanhood. She was the child he would never have and could not ignore. As Meggie grew up her childhood hero-worship turned into teenage infatuation for a man completely different from the men in her family and very narrow social circle. Father Ralph failed to recognise that Meggie had grown up, and left for Rome after Mary's death, leaving Meggie angry at his apparent rejection of her love. Fiona's negligence of Meggie, and Meggie's obsession with Ralph, culminate in a disastrous marriage, and Meggie becoming a live-in help whilst her husband, who bears a passing resemblance to Ralph, forms a bromance with the leader of a team of sugarcane cutters. A difficult pregnancy and birth brought Ralph to her bedside, where he finally sees Meggie as an adult woman, not a little girl. The love that he can offer is not enough for Meggie, who shows her anger at him and his God. From there this theme of conflicted love runs more forcefully through their loves and the way it plays out affects the next generation as well as causing a crisis for Ralph, which links into the legend of the Thornbird who sings once just before she dies impaled on a thorn. This is a sweeping family saga in which the landscape and weather are almost characters in their own right, such is their importance. It might not be great "Literature", but it is a great story. Read and enjoy.

excellent livre pour cette saga en général, ses descriptions à propos de l Australie . Histoire invraisemblable sur les prêtres ou les cardinaux au Vatican ou dans notre monde actuel, mais histoire tellement réaliste encore au XXI ème siècle. Le film concernant ce roman est également à voir et à revoir Bonne lecture à tous

Non lo avevo mai letto e nemmeno avevo seguito la serie TV. Bellissimo romanzo, interessante dall’inizio alla fine. Forse il più bel libro che ho letto negli ultimi 18 mesi. Inglese piuttosto difficile per me (B2/C1). La scrittrice usa in vocabolario molto articolato e tantissimi sinonimi a termini comuni non sono per me immediatamente comprensibili. Avevo in passato apprezzato tutta la serie su Roma. Posso solo confermare che è stata una grandissima scrittrice

Excellent! I could relive my youth moments when I first read the book and saw the series. It is a POCKET BOOK, but it's enough for a quick reading.