Rašau atsiliepimą įpusėjusi knygą. Puikiai parašyta baisiai man neįdomi knyga. Aš ją toliau skaitau dėl to, kad (1) retai nebaigiu skaityti knygų, (2) ji nėra bloga per se, (3) dėmesingumo (mindfulness) praktikai, nes, skirtingai nuo dažnos šiuolaikinės literatūros, čia gausu tiesiog buvimo čia, aplinkos, veiksmų aprašymų, bet ne pačio veiksmo.
O neįdomi ji man tikriausiai dėl to, jog aš visai nepatikėjau pagrindiniu veikėju - Ričardu Morganu. Aš negaliu patikėti, kad gali egzistuoti toks su gyvenimo negandomis susitaikantis žmogus.
O gal aš tai vadinu susitikymu, nes knyga parašyta taip, kaip mes žiūrime filmą - matome tik judesį, bet nematome išgyvenimų ir kas verda galvoje. Nes kas verda Ričardo galvoje ir širdyje perteikta labai paviršutiniškai, o tai kas perteikta manęs visai neįtikina. Aš dėl prisvilusios vakarienės daugiau pergyvenu, nei kad Ričardas dėl savo gyvenimo duobių.

O dabar atsiliepimas praėjus kiek laiko po šios knygos užvertimo. Kaip sunkiai ji man skaitės (ją beskaitydama perskaičiau dar 3 knygas pailsėjimui nuo Morgano kelio), tačiau nesigailiu, kad ji pateko man į rankas. Morgano pradine versija niekaip netikiu ir dabar, kažkaip keistai neįtikinamai autorė jį perteikė jo kelio pradžioje. Tačiau istorinis knygos aspektas buvo labai įdomus. Sunkiai įsivaizduojamas iš šių laikų perspektyvos.
Smulkmena, tačiau užstrigo vieta, kuri šiems laikams vargiai suvokiama: kai Morgano paklausė, ar nenorėtum nusiųsti laiško artimiesiems, nes tuo išplauks laivas, jis atsakė "ne šį kartą". Kitas kartas pasitaikys gal po pusmečio ar po metų, artimieji laišką gaus dar po metų. Mums, elektroninių laiškų kasdienybėje, toks tempas ir toks laiko vertinimas - nesuprantamas.

2.5 Kantrybės pareikalavęs istorinis grožinis romanas. 800 puslapių - ryškiai per daug, pilnai būtų užtekę ir pusės tiek. Veiksmas rutuliojosi lėtai, nuobodžiai ir be intrigos, o perdėto, sauso detalizavimo (pvz. transportinio laivo grandininio siurblio veikimo principo aprašymas) gausa varė į neviltį. Nors ir be entuziazmo, romaną vis dėlto įveikiau. Autorė tikrai atliko didelį darbą parašiusi tokią knygą, o ir aš praturtėjau žiniomis apie Australijos kolonizavimą. Pagarba mums abiem :)

This is the story of Richard Morgan, a convict who spent twelve months on the seas and how this kind of people were used in order to populate an unknown continent. With the advent of the American Revolution has closed the New World to England’s prisoners.

The author thus describes the 18th century England’s colonization of Australia with the foundation of a new prison colony of n  
nBotany Bay - the same place where Captain Cook landed in 1770.



The ships disembarked in Port Jackson, which will become later the Sydney Harbour.



Morgan moves then to the Norfolk Island in the South Pacific.



Since I’ve been to Australia quite recently, I wanted to learn a little more about the colonization of this relative young country.

This book was supposed to be the first one of a trilogy but as far as I know, the author never finished it.


4* Tim
4* An Indecent Obsession
4* Thorn Birds
3* A Creed for the Third Millennium
3* The ladies of Missalonghi
3* Morgan’s Run
TBR The First Man in Rome
TBR The Song of Troy
TBR Bittersweeet

The problem with this book is that the details overwhelm the story-telling. McCullough is so invested in painting the world exactly as it was that the pace of the story suffers greatly. Morgan's Run would have made for a more enjoyable reading experience at 600 pages than it does at its monster 830 pages.

One's reading life is too abbreviated to waste on books that are long on page length and short on information. As evidenced by her otherwise excellent Masters of Rome series and this bit of over-researched fluff, McCullough desperately needs an editor. Morgan's Run (aka "life," as in, "I had a good run" as well as the name of a government-sanction rum distillery on Norfolk Island) is a biography of Richard Morgan, freeman of Bristol transported by a typical late 18th century British miscarriage of justice to Norfolk Island (a First Fleet colony of convict-settled Australia). The book begins with the announcement of the War of Independence in 1776 (albeit from a typical Bristol tavern point-of-view) though Richard's transporting aboard the Alexander doesn't take place until 1788. This represents 236 mind-numbing pages into the book with arrival in Botany Bay awaiting the turn of yet another 100 pages, meaning that more than half of the book's 600 pages are dull and irrelevant prologue in which Richard Morgan is more acted upon than actor.

Things pick up a bit as Morgan is taken from Plymouth for a year's sail to arrive in Botany Bay. Through revealed competence and an apparent encyclopedic memory, Morgan becomes head man among his small set of convicts. Unfortunately, most of the conflict is fleeting and quickly resolved (or abandoned), and the laconic Morgan makes for such poor company that even McCullough appears glad for opportunities to abandon him as the focus of her narrative (chiefly toward the end when she introduces a new character from off the Lady Juliana of the Second Fleet). As always, McCullough captures the tenor of the times and dialogue well, but she appears overwhelmed by ephemera: descriptions of daily weather, Morgan's random accounting of the Norfolk Island sawpit intake for a given week, what Morgan plans to have for dinner of an evening based on current garden inventory, the sequential moves in a game of chess, the distribution list of the latest litter of terrier puppies, and so forth. (And her afterword suggests she hoped to write a follow-up?!) The book was as substantial as styrofoam, cumbersome, bulky, and in need of compression. More worth a skim than a full read.

Un livre que j'ai lu adolescente, après mon père, après ma mère.
J'ai adoré ce roman, des années après j'en garde un excellent souvenir. C'est très bien écrit, ça se lit tout seul, vraiment vraiment très chouette !!!

Dit is het verhaal van Richard Morgan, een man uit Bristol. Hij is getrouwd en heeft twee kinderen. Helaas sterft zijn dochtertje Mary aan de pokken als ze drie jaar is, en een paar jaar later krijgt zijn vrouw een beroerte en overlijdt onmiddellijk. Nog een tijd later verdwijnt zijn tienjarig zoontje William Henry, waarschijnlijk verdronken, maar zijn lichaam wordt nooit teruggevonden.
Vooral deze laatste wond heelt niet bij Richard. Hij begint steeds meer te drinken, en dan ontmoet hij een vrouw waarop hij verliefd wordt. Maar deze zit in een complot om Richard aan de grond te brengen. Richard wordt gearresteerd en na een jarenlange gevangenisstraf, naar Botany Bay gestuurd. De reis is vol verschrikkingen en duurt erg lang. Ook de eerste tijd op Botany Bay en later Norfolk Island is er een vol ontberingen en harde arbeid. Maar Richard geeft niet op, en uiteindelijk slaagt hij erin om op Norfolk Island een nieuw leven op te bouwen met een vrouw waar hij van houdt en waarmee hij een gezinnetje sticht.

Prachtig boek, met heel levendige beschrijvingen van de omstandigheden in de gevangenis, op het schip en op het eiland. Dikwijls zijn de wreedheden, zowel opgelegd door de oversten, als door de natuur, erg hard om te lezen, maar ze komen waarheidsgetrouw over.
De volharding van Richard is zonder meer prijzenswaardig, weinigen deden het hem na.

Ik had het boek al enkele jaren, maar eens ik er in begon te lezen, kon ik niet meer stoppen!
Een dikke pluim!

Gripping history of the birth of a nation and it's people. Even though it is super long, this one is worth investing the time to read.

Listened first to the abridged audio read by Tim Curry- excellent. It was then selected by my f2f discussion group so I read the book as well. Always like stories set in days of Australian penal colony and this one was good. The parts on the ship were quite graphic in describing the hardships but I liked the cleverness of the main character in his preparations for survival in the prison ship. Also like the way the main character built his homestead in Australia. Great adventure. Wish it would have a sequel.

This has been the shelf for years and I finally got around to reading it. The story takes place in the late 1700s after the American Revolution, in Bristol, England, on a slaver/convict transport vessel, and eventually in Norfolk Island by way of Botany Bay, Australia. Colleen McCullough does amazing research to provide incredible details about life in whatever period she is writing, using language which is not too modern and describing things as they might be perceived by the character who knows nothing of what we know today. Not only does it help the reader to feel a part of the time and place, but this serves to feel that you're going deeper into that time period to understand the regular person's experience of those history stories that we superficially learn about in school.

In particular, by reading this novel, not only did I learn a bit more about the settlement of Australia by British convicts (the obvious history lesson here), but the state of the lives of the working class English really gave me an insight about American culture and its revolt against government taxation, which continues until this day. For example, the British pervasiveness of licensing every aspect of commerce in England was insane. Unlike in America, where licensing (more or less) serves the purpose of ensuring safety and compliance with social norms, in England it served only to raise revenue for the government. (Yes, I realize that regulation in America also provides a revenue stream, but I don't wish to have that argument here.)

As to the particulars of the story, Morgan is Richard Morgan, a real-life historical figure in Norfolk Island history (Norfolk Island is in the middle of the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, and a part of the Commonwealth of Australia). He was convicted of larceny in England and eventually sentenced to 7 years' transportation to Botany Bay. The story tells the epic of his life and how his steady character, work eithic, insight, and luck allowed him to make a new life for himself on Norfolk Island.

The author lives in Norfolk Island, and as a result I'm sure her basic familiarity with the story of the island and Richard Morgan is more than most folks have, particularly non-Australians. I don't know much about it, so I can't attest to how much liberty has been taken with the history. Having read this, I do want to read more about Australian history, in general, realizing that I really know very little about it beyond the basic concept that it was settled primarily by convicts who were resettled there.

If I had one complaint about the story it would be that Richard Morgan dosen't seem to have any fatal flaws. Granted, things happened which led to the conviction (right or wrong) which were certainly influenced by his character, but ultimately things seemed to have worked out better for him as a result. This story certainly glorifies him. I suppose that is the liberty of historical fiction.

Aside from the somewhat greater appreciation of the circustances leading to the American Revolution and Australian settlement that I now I have, I also really liked the handling of the character of Stephan Donovan (fictionalized, although there was a Stephen Donovan, Midshipman, in the First Fleet). In Morgan's Run, he is an openly gay "Miss Molly" who is Morgan's best friend. All very interestingly written.

I read Morgan's Run during my sabbatical leave in New South Wales (Terrigal Beach) in early 2001, shortly after its publication in 2000. I had read Colleen McCullough's Thorn Birds (cheapo romance, IMO) and Tim, a very touching book with echoes of Algernon to me. I was amazed that it had so many details about an ancestor of McCullough's husband, the British convict Richard Morgan, his life as a free man in a good family, his imprisonment and then "transportation" on a ship in the First Fleet of settlers in Australia, and ending with the beginning of his life working his way to freedom there.

I say I read it--I listened to the audio CD version. I think I bought it at a bookstore on the Rocks in Sydney but I may have bought it at the ABC (Australia Broadcasting Company) store in a mall near Terrigal. I had a fairly long drive each day to the Central Coast campus of the University of Newcastle where I was helping set up a center for early childhood research and thus I listened to a number of Australian novels and biographies. I focused a lot at the beginning on the original settlers, both convict and freeborn people.

(Later, I focused on the Aboriginal history and also on current day novels. The Aboriginal histories included books by men and women of aboriginal heritage who had been "stolen" and given to non-aboriginal families. This was long before the movie Rabbitproof Fence but it was the kind of background for the movie.)

I have listened to it at least one more time after I returned to my home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and now I am reading it in print. The focus for this reading was a new book by Kline, The Exiles, a Novel, which was set in 1840 and was about young women who were transported from England to Tasmania (Van Dieman's land at the time). Both books described their characters traveling in converted slave ships. The Kline book's description of the conditions in the slave ship were a bit better than Morgan's descriptions from the 1786-1787 period and "google" said that indeed the slave ships were improved by that more recent time period. However, there was one ship of women in the First Fleet but McCullough does not describe their conditions.

While my initiative was to compare the conditions aboard the slave ships, I have found I am reading for more about social conditions across the different settings, about British laws and courts, and male-female/LGBT relationships. I am definitely glad I decided to read Morgan's Run once again.

This novel is based on the true story of Richard Morgan who is the real life 4 times-great, grandfather of Coleen McCullough's husband. The novel took me on an adventure that I had never even dreamed of in this riveting, bigger than life novel. Richard Morgan led a somewhat average life in England in the late 1700s but his unjust conviction of a crime that he didn't commit and his exile first by ship, under the most deplorable conditions that one could imagine, sent him on journey that gave him more strength than he had ever known. A year later the ship, Alexandria, with of some of England's prisoners landed in New Holland (later named Australia), in the newly formed English penal colony which was established to rid England of their "undesirables". It is through these adventures and disasters that he led the first of the penal colony exiles to create new lives in Botany Bay, Australia and Norfolk Island which lies between Australia and New Zealand

At first I was disappointed that it was not exactly the novel that I expected because it was a slow starter and only a fourth of the novel takes place in Australia. However, I did find that the travel on the ship and McCullough's mesmerizing descriptions of the experience of the sea and ports of Africa and Brazil to be breathtaking, as she was able to create in my mind, the experience of these of places I have never been. Her characters, while not always likable, came alive for me and I don't think I will ever forget them. It is apparent that she historically researched every page that she wrote and all of it is very believable.

I recommend this wonderful novel to any one who loves history and (to coin a phrase) likes to travel by armchair.