The Thorn Birds
Colleen McCullough, 1977
HarperCollins
673 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061990472
Summary
Colleen McCullough's sweeping saga of dreams, struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback has enthralled readers the world over.
This is the chronicle of three generations of Clearys, ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrate their family. Most of all, it is the story of only daughter Meggie and her lifelong relationship with the haunted priest Father Ralph de Bricassart—an intense joining of two hearts and souls that dangerously oversteps sacred boundaries of ethics and dogma.
A poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit, Colleen McCullough's acclaimed masterwork remains a monumental literary achievement—a landmark novel to be cherished and read again and again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 1., 1937
• Where—Wellington, New South Wales, Australia
• Died—January 29, 2015
• Where—Norfolk Island, Australia
• Education—Holy Cross college, Woolhara; University of Sydney
Colleen Margaretta McCullough (married name Robinson) was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds.
McCullough was born in 1937 in Wellington, in the Central West region of New South Wales, to James and Laurie McCullough. Her mother was a New Zealander of part-Maori descent. During her childhood, the family moved around a great deal, eventually settled in Sydney where she attended Holy Cross College Woollahra. She was "a voracious reader" with a strong interest in both science and the humanities.
She had a younger brother, Carl, who drowned in the Mediterranean when he was 25. She based a character in The Thorn Birds on him, and also wrote about him in Life Without the Boring Bits.
Before her tertiary education, McCullough earned a living as a teacher, librarian and journalist. In her first year of medical studies at the University of Sydney she suffered dermatitis from surgical soap and was told to abandon her dreams of becoming a medical doctor. Instead, she switched to neuroscience and worked at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney.
In 1963, McCullough moved for four years to the United Kingdom; at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London she met the chairman of the neurology department at Yale University who offered her a research associate job at Yale. She spent ten years from April 1967 to 1976 researching and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
Writing
It was while at Yale that she wrote her first two books. One of these, The Thorn Birds, became an international best seller that in 1983 was turned into one of the most watched television mini-series of all time.
The success of these books enabled her to give up her medical-scientific career and to try to "live on her own terms." In the late 1970s, after stints in London and Connecticut, she settled on the isolation of Norfolk Island, off the coast of mainland Australia, where she met her husband, Ric Robinson. They married in 1984. Under his birth name Cedric Newton Ion-Robinson, he was a member of the Norfolk Legislative Assembly. He changed his name formally to Ric Newton Ion Robinson in 2002.
McCullough's 2008 novel The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet engendered controversy with her reworking of characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Susannah Fullerton, the president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, said she "shuddered" that Elizabeth Bennet was rewritten as weak, and Mr Darcy as savage.
She is one of the strongest, liveliest heroines in literature...[and] Darcy's generosity of spirit and nobility of character make her fall in love with him—why should those essential traits in both of them change in 20 years?
McCullough died on 29 January 2015, at the age of 77, on Norfolk Island from apparent kidney failure after suffering from a series of small strokes. She had suffered from failing eyesight and was confined to a wheelchair.
Recognition
In 1984, a portrait of McCullough, painted by Wesley Walters, was a finalist in the Archibald Prize. The prize is awarded for the "best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics."
The depth of historical research for the novels on ancient Rome led to her being awarded a Doctor of Letters degree by Macquarie University in 1993.
She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia on 12 June 2006, "[f]or service to the arts as an author and to the community through roles supporting national and international educational programs, medico-scientific disciplines and charitable organisations and causes."
Bibliograhy
Novels (stand-alones):
Tim (1974) ♦ The Thorn Birds (1977) ♦ An Indecent Obsession (1981) ♦ A Creed for the Third Millennium (1985) ♦ The Ladies of Missalonghi (1987) ♦ The Song of Troy (1998) ♦ Morgan's Run (2000) ♦ The Touch (2003) ♦ Angel Puss (2004) ♦ The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet (2008) ♦ Bittersweet (2013).
Masters of Rome series
The First Man in Rome (1990) ♦ The Grass Crown (1991) ♦ Fortune's Favorites (1993) ♦ Caesar's Women (1996) ♦ Caesar (1997) ♦ The October Horse (2002) ♦ Antony and Cleopatra (2007).
Carmine Delmonico series
On, Off (2006) ♦ Too Many Murders (December 2009) ♦ Naked Cruelty (2010) ♦ The Prodigal Son (2012) ♦ Sins of the Flesh (2013). (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/8/2015.)
Book Reviews
A heart-rending epic...truly marvelous.
Chicago Tribune
A perfect read.... The kind of book the world blockbuster was made for.
Boston Globe
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