This
is the story centering around a Catholic priest who loves an
10-year-old girl as he would the daughter he’ll never have,
and then the girl grows up, and he loves her as a woman. One wonders if
with the clergy sexual abuse revelations, Colleen McCullough would have
had second thoughts about starting the story in Meggie
Cleary’s childhood. When actually did Father Ralph de
Bricassart first have sexual feelings toward Meggie?
Regardless, he says he loves God more. And he’s ambitious.
Father Ralph wants to rise in the church, and a cunning old woman’s will ensures that he
will. He leaves behind the Australian Outback and Meggie, and they
spend the rest of their lives cherishing one another at great
distances, with rare but consequential meetings.
Many people praise The Thorn Birds
as one of the greatest love stories ever told, although some find the
characters flat and undeveloped. For the latter group there may be
another appeal of the book: Australian McCullough’s intimate
knowledge of the Outback brings to life a region most people know only
as a remote area of a faraway country. Severe weather episodes pose
formidable challenges for the sheep-farming Cleary family. McCullough
details the hardships in an epic story that spans three generations,
from the Irish immigrants Paddy and Fee through Meggie and her brothers
and then Meggie’s two children, the only members of the third
generation.
The book’s title refers to a legend that Father Ralph tells
the young Meggie about a bird that sings just once in its life. It
searches for a thorn tree from the day it leaves the nest until it
impales itself on a long, sharp spine. Dying, it sings more sweetly
than any other creature on the face of the earth. When Meggie asks what
it means, he answers, “That the best . . . is brought only at
the cost of great pain.” Presumably McCullough was
foreshadowing Meggie and Ralph’s forbidden love, but
it's hard to figure out just how the metaphor applies.
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