Sometimes when he didn’t know he was being watched Meggie would look at him and try desperately to imprint his face upon her brain’s core . . . And he would turn to find her watching him, a look in his eyes of haunted grief, a doomed look. She understood the implicit message, or thought she did; he must go, back to the Church and his duties. Never again with the same spirit, perhaps, but more able to serve. For only those who have slipped and fallen know the vicissitudes of the way . . .

A classic historical family saga taking the Cleary family from 1915 New Zealand to 1969 Australia and Europe. In The Thorn Birds Ms McCullough has created a family of incredibly realistic characters who fight the struggles of life on two fronts – the harshness of life in the Australian Outback and personal conflicts which shape the people they become.

Australia with its heat and dust, it’s fires and floods is the panoramic backdrop for an unconventional love story which would lose much of its impact without this realistic depiction of just how harsh life was for people who struggled to live off the land. From the wealthy Clearys to itinerant sheep shearers and cane cutters, and the ubiquitous swagmen, Australia is revealed in all it’s unforgiving nature through sight and sound and scent.

At the heart of The Thorn Birds is the love between Meggie and Ralph, a priest who puts his faith and career in the Church before his love for the woman who is the other half of himself. Ms McCullough has crafted a fascinating plot which juxtaposes the difficulties of living this love with the difficulties of living in the outback. The central characters of this novel are totally human, incredibly flawed yet strong, and I’m sure that all readers will recognise something of themselves in them.

Love hurts. That may seem a trite saying but it is one most people can relate too, and in The Thorn Birds we see the raw emotion and hurt that can be caused by such love. This is a powerful telling of human emotion where duty and desire are the two sides of a coin which can never fully be seen or realised at the same time. One must take precedence over the other, sometimes duty sometimes love, but always the other call is there drawing the characters into situations they find incredibly difficult, even heart-breaking, but which they would never be without.

The Thorn Birds is a well-crafted powerful novel written in descriptive prose and realistic dialogue which cannot fail to move, and as such I highly recommend it.

The Thorn Birds can be found on Amazon

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