Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

It sounds so seventies! I wasn't surprised to see it was first published in '77 :P I'm surprised you made it through all of that.

I'm nothing if not tenacious!

Dammit, you make it almost sound like it's so bad that it's good. I kind of want to read it now.

Bwahahahaaa!! I read this ages ago and remember watching the miniseries with what's his name playing the good-looking priest (aka "Father What-a-waste"). Your review totally made me lol because TRUE :D

LOL, I just finished the first 50 pages and am sort of reluctant to continue because I thought the same...
When Fee said to Frank "But you need a wife, Frank. If you had one, you wouldn't have time to think about me." I was like OMG...

I loved the book.

This review made me LAUGH OUT LOUD! It was awesome. Thanks!!!

great review!

Yes...it is obvious that you don't like this kind of story but why the hell do you want to disgust others? We all are different lady and if this book is rather sad it is deeply interesting because life isn't a fairy tale and Meggie comes from a poor family ..plus it was very difficult to be a girl at that time,more difficult than today because women were proud to have a son..A son was a source of pride,he could work hard and become a man.A girl was often considered like an intruder because women had hard times.This book is a bit overdramatized but it is a good study of characters ,of the ambivalences we all have inside.It talks also about Love, hatred,jealousy ,envy..of the patterns we repeat again and again ,of the family secrets..It is realistic too..I understand that it is not your favorite book but there were many Cleary families at that time..

I actually loved the book but I also love this review. Hilarious.

Thanks so much for your review. My book club is discussing it tomorrow and I chose not to read it because I had seen one or two episodes of the mini series and a book about a priest having sex on the side didn't interest me. I decided to look up a few reviews before I go to the discussion tomorrow and I'm so glad that I found yours and that I didn't waste my time reading this book.

LOL love it

I friggin loved your review!! lol. Best review ever. And I enjoyed the book myself :) lol

=))

Could not agree more with your review if I'd written it myself. The ending was the biggest tragedy. How in hells name did the author manage to scrabble so many tragedies together in one book and not even give Meghie one bloody grandchild? Why was every man so pathetic? So the biggest trad gets of all was the end... the bit where I realise I spent 11 hours of my life reading this book...

This was the best summary ever. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to find the priest lusting after a child creepy as hell. This is a good example of the unnatural ability to marry oneself to a deity and deprive themself of a fully functioning and stable relationship. It cultivates sick thinking like getting hot over children.

Hahahaha! I read this book when I was 11 and loved it. Learned a lot (ahem). I was thinking I should read it again but your review saved me. Thanks!

Your review is very funny. I loved the book when I was a kid and the tv series, but I don't think I could reread it the same way after reading your review.

It was terrible wasn't it!? I read the thing over a series of several days at work (I was REALLY bored) and eventually it became a test of will... can I face any more of this tripe, or will my brain drip out my ears first? But at least I was being paid...

What a relief to learn that other people feel the same.

Such a review, actually, can only serve as a honor to the book.

hahaha I tried reading and gave up your review is more hilarious!!

Who was considered the thornbird person who had a tragic life and then fell on the thorn singing a beautiful song?

I agree. This book sucks. An adult priest getting the hots for a four year old and continues........gross.

a foul mouth like yours doesn't belong on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ.

Amen to that David.

This is hilarious!

Lovely blue tea set? I dont recall that. What page was that on?

Lmao wonderful review, I wont be reading

can't agree more.
it says a"family saga"but mostly male in the family either are shearing or on their way to shear.and them female just always on"pick me,pick me,why you not pick me,someone pick me but he is lair so i lie too"mode…�
plus can't figure out why you create a character done absolutely nothing and get crush to death by a boar

Reading your wonderful review I'm laughing so hard I'm crying. Am Australian so having had to endure this absolute crap of a novel, now have to endure the news saga of her husband winning back inheritance of her estate which her lawyer/agent had wrongfully arranged to be left to a university. Loving a university being a bit like loving a celibate priest. But nothing succeeds like success, as they say, crap or not. Just feel lucky 'The Thorn Birds Musical' never made it to your neighborhood.

Lushang, agree completely. It's a novel by someone whose motto for life was: "It'll be a nice day, if it doesn't rain." And it always rains.

This book is awful and don’t forget we’re told Meggie is beautiful nearly every page. I have never despised a character like mEggie. And is Frank in love with his mother or something? It certainly comes across that way.

It's liberating to read all these excellent reviews of this poorly conceived and badly written work. It wouldn't be so bad if it were pulp fiction but it's held up as art. During the Baby Boomer generation, any old thing that sounded a bit pretentious was hailed as genius, because they were all high on weed and Wilhelm Reich. It was the generation that discharged limitless gobs of genius.

I've see this kind of review before, the review that says, "Many terrible things happen to the same person close together so it's unrealistic, silly, and depressing." I don't really understand this view, to be honest, because reading about people to whom nothing bad happens, who never experience negative emotions, never encounter adversity, and have nothing to overcome would be boring. That isn't the stuff of storytelling.

I'm trying to read it, becase my friend loves this story.but since page one I've hated it and now I'm on a reading slump beceause of this book!! I was feeling so bad because everyone loves it and I don't. but thanks to your review I feel so much better!!

yuki wrote: "I'm trying to read it, becase my friend loves this story.but since page one I've hated it and now I'm on a reading slump beceause of this book!! I was feeling so bad because everyone loves it and I..."
I'm glad to be of service. It was the era. So much in literature, art and architecture was awful or at best mediocre, like this ridiculous book.

Count me in, as someone who could never understand why this book was so loved. What, did she have like 7 brothers and they all led stunted lives?

Best review of this over-rated drivel I've read.
Truly is a sh!t book

Thanks for the laugh. I struggled to page 100, but then conceded defeat. This book was not for me. However, your review made up for it.

Oh man, this review made me LAUGH.

I read this book for the first time as a young teen and loved it. I decided to reread it as an adult after finishing watching Fleabag and being reminded of the OG Hot Priest. Hoollly cow, problematic does not scratch the surface of the adult man pining away for the company of a 10 year old.

And c'mon Ralph, it's math. Take Dane's age, now add nine months, and look at your calendar. Notice how it falls right in that section labeled "Raw dog Meggie for a few weeks at the beach."

That's a brilliant review...I'm going to have to read it. It reminds me of a Diana Gabaldon novel....the main character annoyed the fuck out of me...thanks

First, I really laughed when I read this review, thank you! Laughter is much needed at this time. When I read reviews on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ I usually scroll thru and find the negative ones first and then read the positives. I find that sometimes I agree with the negative ones even though I'm in the minority. I don't like to follow the crowd just because it's popular.

That all said, I think you are way off on this one. I first read The Thorn Birds in 1983 shortly after the miniseries aired. I was 16 and was able to take it out of the school library. There was no Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ back then. For that matter, there was no internet back then. And I think that's part of the point of the success of this novel. I'm not generally a fan of the romance genre because the characters are usually one dimensional and flat; the storylines an insult to my intelligence. The Thorn Birds works because it's so much more than a love story.

Spanning more than 50 years and 3 generations, it tells the story of extreme hardship in the Australian outback. Imagine a world where you were 40 miles from the nearest town and even that was a one horse town. You needed to take a plane to Sydney, the nearest big city. (At the beginning of the novel, the Clearys take a harrowing journey by steamliner from New Zealand in 1915. No plane travel existed yet) No restaurants in the Outback (today we have Outback restaurants every mile or so away) no medical facilities, no grocery stores, no shopping malls. You could be killed be a wild boar or some other wild animal just riding on your horse to your neighbors ranch. Today, we have a meltdown if we go somewhere without WiFi. Hell, you didn't even have indoor plumbing, God only knows what wild creatures were waiting for you when you had to pee.

It was in this setting that the characters develop and how they relate to one another. Hard lives make hard hearts even toward your own children. A lifetime of tragedy takes an emotional toll on all the characters and their ability to love. (Ignorance was also prevelant, how could a mother not explain to her only daughter about her first period?) It was under these conditions that a Catholic priest was a great comfort. A little girl growing up in neglect develops an attachment to a priest. Ralph also grew up under hardship with a cold, domineering mother. He chose the priesthood so he could be above needs of any human love. (Believe it or not, for all the publicity of priest sex abuse, and rightly so, there were many who were simply good priests, and still are.) There was no evidence that Ralph molested Meggie as a child. He simply grew to love another human being because he never had before.

By the time Meggie grows up, Mary Carson dies and sets him up in a diabolical quagmire. He can tear up the new will and leave everything to Meggie or claim everything for himself and the church leaving Meggie with everything and nothing at the same time. For the rest of his life, he always has contact with the Clearys and always carries the weight of his guilt over his choice.

Later on, Meggie and Ralph spend the weeks on Matlock Island and conceive Dane. It's not so much that he doesn't know that Dane is his son, its that he's too arrogant to admit he's the boy's father. In those days, Catholic priests were above mere mortals and he liked that power more than he wanted to admit his own human fallibility. It's very hard to explain that to younger, modern readers because that world doesn't exist anymore. The book and movie came out before all the priest sex abuse scandals and there probably were many many Ralph and Meggies that we'll never know about because frankly, nobody cares.

Anyway, I highly recommend it for anyone who likes historical romance, multi generational conflict or just finding out what the world used to be like before they were born.

This review reminds me of how I felt watching GOT seasons 2-5. It was so depressing I couldn’t understand why people kept watching just to gain hope and have it smashed away again with some vile circumstance. But having the flu for a week, I got through 2-5, and the next flu I rewatched them all and got through season 6. Maybe I’ll save this book for my next flu . . . 🙈

I loved the movie so I finally read it. It was one HUGE tragedy after another. So many descriptions about the landscapes. Almost more than about the people. Ugh

Lots of people knew Dane was Ralph’s son. RALPH was the one who never saw it.

Reminds me of Pillars of Earth.
Build it > destroy it. Hope > despair. Love > hate.

I loved the book, but I also love this review.

I get a notice every time someone comments on this review, and then I read it again and chuckle. It’s so funny.

You really don't understand that book. The best what you can do is just not continue reading. Not every book is for everyone.

Thank you for writing this review. I read this over a vacation and I felt alternately mad and depressed and I also came to the realization it was because of this book. God I hated reading it.