“When we press the thorn to our chest we know, we understand, and still we do it.”

Apparently this is another highly-regarded book I don't get the appeal of. I'd been excited to read this for awhile, and when I started it, my mother told me my aunt loved the movie. Not knowing the story, I had high hopes.

This is basically what happened when I read The Thorn Birds:

First 10 pages - Strange family, love the writing style, awesome.
First sixty pages - Interesting conflicts between characters who stand out, I'm intrigued
First 150-200 pages - Hard lives, brutal times. I'm hoping something new will happen soon....where's the next plot point?? I'll pick up again later.
Another hundred pages - Oh, no! Sad moment. Otherwise...Dare I say I'm getting bored? Need patience, need patience
Another hundred pages - Still boring and I'm reading it slow. I hope there's some big point to all this eventually. It's dragging.
Another hundred pages - I'm starting to feel like this will never end. Something mildly interesting happens, then we have to hear about it for fifty pages, dragged out and little emotion.
Another hundred pages - really, that's it? I hate these people.

Basically it starts okay, but the ultimate "plot" is through the lives of bitter people who never reach for happiness or more than the hands life deals them with. They're miserable, they know they'll never be happy, they accept it and drift through the pages and events with no emotion. The end just shows the same thing - life sucks, then you die. You love sons more than daughters. It's inevitable to fall in love and have it destroy the life in you, oh well. Eventually you don't care about anyone anymore. Oh well. There's the land, but it doesn't matter in the end either, oh well.

I don't even get the "romance." It felt flimsy to me at times, frustrating at others. My favorite character was probably Paddy and Frank, but any charm with them is wiped away early to pave way for robots.

I didn't need to read almost 700 pages of that. So little happened in these pages after the first 200 or so. At the end I kind of ended up hating the characters anyway and couldn't wait to say goodbye.

This will be another time I'm in the unpopular group, but oh well - life apparently sucks, especially if you have the lives these characters do.

I think I read this for the first time in 4th grade. (I hid it in my room for a month b/c this is sooo not a book for a 10 year old!!) My father is an ex-Catholic priest who left the church for my mother so when the mini series came out, the world stopped in my house for an entire week. It's an epic saga about an Irish farming family who relocated to Australia to help work at an ailing aunt's ranch. The book spans some 40+ years of hardships they encounter. The only daughter, Meggie, falls in love with a local parish priest who has ambitions of Rome and is constantly tempted by her seductions. It's a tearjerker of a classic and I'm not ashamed to say I love it.

Препрочитам романа, който съм чела на крехките 17г. Няма идея как и колко съм го осмислила по онова време, но имам изключително жив спомен колко силно ми въздейства, колко плаках и колко ясно виждам сцената, в която Меги тича по плажа към Ралф Де Брикасар ❤️❤️❤️

Нямам навика да препрочитам книги, все съм устремена към новите заглавия, с които ме очаква среща, а има и още нещо - страхувам се дали към днешна дата бих оценила подобаващо всички онези класики, които толкова ме впечатляваха и ми въздействаха в гимназията.

Затова пристъпих много плахо към препрочита на “Птиците умират сами”. Няма да ви занимавам с анализ на прочетеното. Ясно е - книгата е ВЕЛИКОЛЕПНА! Абсолютно уникална семейна сага за рода Клиъри и живота им в имението Дройда.
Толкова много теми има, че за книгата може да се дискутира с часове. Това, което ме изненада (освен как на практика нищо не помня от историята, освен разбира се романтичната нишка) е, че именно точно любовта между Меги и Ралф Де Брикасар не ме впечатли, не ме натъжи и не ме трогна, както преди години. Дали е опит, много прочетени книги и десетки други любовни истории или просто с годините ставам цинична, но тази нишка в книгата не беше водеща за мен този път. Да развълнувах се, ядосах се и намразих Отец де Брикасар, но други неща привлякоха вниманието ми - отношенията между Фий и Пад, деца-родители, братя-сестри.

Не съжалявам, че отделих време за този препрочит и само мога да препоръчам на всички, които още не са чели романа.

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.

Caur vienas ģimenes vairāku paaudžu sieviešu dzīves līkločiem lieliski tiek atklāta ikdienas dzīve Jaunzēlandē un Austrālijā laika periodā no 1915. gadam līdz 1960to beigām. Austrālijas dabas skati, aitkopju dzīve milzīgajā Droedas fermā, reliģijas nozīme ģimenes dzīvē un dzimuma lomu sadalījumā sabiedrībā, ikdienas apģērbi atkarība no klimata un modes izmaiņām, kolorīti, lai arī lielākoties nepārāk tīkami tēli. Ļoti daudzslāņains darbs. Bet par to “lielisko mīlasstāstu”. Fuj.

Priesteris Ralfs laikam ir palīdzējis sabiedrībā iedzīvināt seksīgā, bet aizliegtā priestera tēlu, man gan viņš atmiņā paliks kā egoistisks viltus cietējs.
Katrā ziņā šī klasika ir lasīšanas vērta, vienīgi varbūt ne romantiskā romāna jomā, kaut šeit ir pat seksa ainas, tās vairāk kalpo par pierādījumu, ka mīlestība nevienmēr ir tāda, kā tās pašas romantiskās grāmatas iztēlo, un visbiežāk sagādā vilšanos...

O carte impresionantă!

I read The Thorn Birds way back in the early 80's, and remember loving it! I also watched the mini series with Richard Chamberlain...loved it too!!

Three generations of Cleary's with Meggie as the main character, and her love for the priest. All set in the Australian outback, covering the hardships of the bush....

Because of the fact that I read it so long ago, I can't remember details, therefore I will just tell you, if you love historical romance, this is a book for you!!! I will re-read this at some time in the future..

This is by far the most recommended book I've ever read. I've been meaning to read this one for the longest time as people keep saying it's well worth a read, and very often from people in my real life that isn't that huge of a reader themselves. I'm glad I bought it on second hand as it's a book I'll want to revisit more in the future. Although my reading experience wasn't that great as the text in my book was tiney tiny.

This is my kind of book: an epic family saga with a strong sense of place. I hate to give it only three stars, but I've had to conclude that while it has its strengths, it doesn't live up to what it could have been.

The Thorn Birds starts off excellently, detailing the day-to-day life of a family struggling to get by in early twentieth century New Zealand. It's well-written, it feels very realistic, and there's a strong sense of place. There's believable conflict among the family members without any of them being unsympathetic. There's an interesting and unflinching look at the effects of strict gender roles on women's lives: something we don't see in most historical fiction, which tends to feature the elite rather than regular folks. (I'll read about the regular folks, any day, and McCullough does it well.) When the family picks up and moves to Australia, I was still enthralled. I loved the descriptions of life in the Outback and was drawn into the family's story.

Somewhere along the way though, things went wrong. The characters' personalities and relationships began to lose credibility with me; several times I just couldn't swallow that people in these situations would relate to each other the way they do. Meggie's relationships with both her mother and her daughter felt especially bizarre, full of contrived antagonism far beyond what one would expect. (In Justine's case, evidently she dislikes Meggie from birth. Ooookay.) Meanwhile, some of the more colorful personalities, such as Frank and Luke, fall off the face of the earth, while the brothers lose what personality they once had and slowly merge into one person, as if McCullough changed her mind about how many brothers the story required but couldn't be bothered to get rid of the extras. As for the romance between Meggie and Ralph, while at first it raised some interesting questions, it never captured my emotions and became increasingly repetitive.

Which is not to say that this is an awful book, because it isn't. It's well-written and the thematics are strong. The sense of place persists throughout, and it's fascinating to see how the coming of new technology affects the Outback. The main characters are decently well-developed, and while the book is long, the plot remains interesting throughout. I finished it in a few days. Still, if you have not yet read the classic historical epics, like Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits or Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, I'd recommend going with those first.

بعد از جین ایر احتمالا این کتاب قشنگ‌ترین کلاسیک عمرم خواهد بود.
چقدر فصلای آخر گریه کردم.

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.

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Spellbinding!