Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

3 reviews

askxtine's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

Epic sweeping tale of three generations of a family.  Heartbreaking, lonely, and filled with self doubt.  Yet, I still enjoyed this book, wanted to know what happens next. Reminds me of Outlander as it's very much about a specific place and time. I feel like I've been to NSW now.  Was this billed as a romance? Because it's only about 5% romance, and even then mostly broken hearts romance. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and War

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Sexual content

masha__me's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Misogyny, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and War

Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Homophobia, Infertility, Mental illness, Racism, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Murder, Lesbophobia, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, and Sexual harassment

chalkletters's review against another edition

emotional sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I picked up The Thorn Birds four years ago because it was mentioned in The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club. I devoured it over the course of a week in a holiday cottage, and it packed an enormous emotional punch. I've been looking forward to rereading it ever since, which might seem odd because almost nothing nice happens in the entire 54-year span of the novel's plot. 

The Thorn Birds appeals to the part of me that signed up to take a module on Settler Identity: Fictions of Oz/Nz at university; it starts out as a story about coming to a new place and trying to make a life there. All the characters' lives are limited in some way - by class, by money, by gender. It's not even as if the characters band together to overcome these problems, because most of the relationships in the book are strained to some degree.

Colleen McCullough makes these tragedies cathartic, rather than depressing. The characters and their emotions feel incredibly well-observed and realistic. The prose has just the right balance between descriptions, interior thoughts, action and dialogue. Specific scenes linger in the memory so that, on rereading, I found myself recalling them just before they happened and was able to see the foreshadowing which I missed when I didn't know what was coming. Even though these events no longer came as a surprise, they were still able to bring on a storm of tears.

Reading this so close after Brideshead Revisited, it struck me that Colleen McCullough does a better job at making Catholicism understandable to someone who wasn't brought up with it than Evelyn Waugh does, as well as offering a more sympathetic portrayal. 

Though I'm not a reader who loves or goes looking for tragedy, The Thorn Birds is such an incredibly satisfying novel that I know I'll return to it again and again.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Child death, Domestic abuse, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal death, Gun violence, and Pregnancy