2017/20 Colleen McCullough: The Thorn Birds (1977) ***

Although this is a long family saga it is compelling and redolent of place and time. Colleen McCullough's knowledge and appreciation of the Australian outback is vivid and impressive. She is fearless in killing off her creations and the dominance of the Catholic church in Australia is a major theme but she shies away from dealing with its more sinister and abusive history. The female characters are strong, as might be expected, and the scenes in the New Zealand primary school run by Catholic nuns is vividly realised around the central character of Meggie. Her affair much later with Irish Catholic priest Ralph (Rafe) de Bricassart is central to the story, although he is perhaps a little too handsome, charming and athletic to be entirely believable. 

The descriptions of landscape and weather are somewhat overwritten but by and large the writing is very sound and workmanlike. Notwithstanding the family's ties to the Drogheda sheep station, the size of a small country, I was not sufficiently attracted to counter the dust, the flies, the snakes and the isolation. As to cane cutting in the Northern Territory, no thank you. This was another Blackstone Audio Book read well but with some difficulties over the Australian accent by Mary Woods, an American narrator.