Reviews with content warning for Grief - The Thorn Birds

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

5 reviews

carlaabra's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

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

3.5

Jesus, where to begin.

As some other reviews have echoed: the characters weren’t as fleshed out as they could’ve been. I think the point of the book was the themes, the tragedy and the suffering. It’s not so much who the characters are or even what they do, but what happens to them, what they endure. What follows are some of my takeaways, but for a book of 700 pages these are inevitably limited.

My favorite portion was Meggie as a child and a teenager, pre-Luke. Dane and Justine I could’ve done without, they were very one-note.
Lengthy descriptions of places and the setting - meant nothing to me, but if you like those they’re quite frequent and well written
There’s really not as much romance as you would expect; there’s a lot of pining, angst, and unspoken feelings instead.
I was emotionally invested but I did not cry, probably because the characters never felt quite fully human to me

Themes (spoilers ahead):

Suffering. Suffering is paramount is this book, which is weird to say. But truly: everyone has good moments, good years, but everyone has deep pain and grief, especially in regards to their romantic partners and children. There’s a lot of death.
The Catholic Church, her hypocrisies and her priests. We’re told of her opulence, her shameful ambivalence in WWII, her closet politics, and of course her demand for her priests to be solely hers. A demand for them to deny their physical humanity and become not-man. We see this in the struggle of two priests, the imperfect Ralph contrasting with the perfect Dane. I’m more acquainted with Protestant theology, so seeing their conception of God and how His servants should serve Him was interesting.
The hardships of women. Our story starts in 1915 in a poor New Zealand home with a father an itinerant shearer. We follow our family as they move to a sprawling Australian homestead and become stockmen. Despite the vast improvement in the men’s lots, working for themselves and enjoying the work, the women do much the same as always: take care of the home and the kids with no complaints. Fee does this, and when old “enough” (like 8 or 9) Meggie is drafted to help her, also occasionally helping on the farm. Then fulfilling a young woman’s purpose: waiting to be married, spiting Ralph by choosing Luke and then suffering his abuse and neglect. Only Justine, born in the 30s, could escape or frankly, even wanted to. However the way the women treat their daughters versus their sons is telling, so much harsher, as if they have to prepare them for how the world will treat them.
Greed and jealousy. Personified in Mary Carson and Luke.
Ambition, related to greed but for things other than money. Ralph is this through and through, and it ruins him (the will, the church, his son). Frank too (to not be Paddy, to be his own man, to not tell the family of his fate). Jims and Patsy are not as extreme, with their foolhardy rush into the army. Paddy and Meggie are great foils.
Pride and miscommunication. Fee not appreciating Paddy; Fee favoring Frank and ignoring Meggie, so wrapped up in her long-lost love and his child that she’s locked all her emotions away. Meggie repeating this verbatim with Dane and Justine when she becomes a mother. Meggie wanting to escape Ralph via another man, then not leaving Luke and returning home sooner. The Drogheda men never marrying. And Meggie, always waiting for Ralph because she can neither muster the strength to go after him or to deny him. Her one last defiance, hiding Dane — which strangely she never seems to regret

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the_addictt's review against another edition

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emotional tense slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

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zezeki's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

3.5

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masha__me's review against another edition

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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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chalkletters's review against another edition

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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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