The Thorn Birds

It is rare for a book to be an international best-seller so quickly. But "the Thorn Birds" by australian writer Collen McCullough is just that-succesful througout the English-speaking world and translated into a number of foreign languages. The book begins in the 8-th of December 1915 in New Zealand's village that is five miles from Wahine. "The thorn Birds" deals with social life, problems of the working class and rural population. But it is also about the unhappy and unrequited love of three generations. At the beginning of the book, Meggie is four-years-old girl. Her mother is a housewife. The life of the Cleary family is very difficult. They have to keep a tight grip on their wallet but Mrs Cleary manages to scrape along somehow. In spite of the poverty the children are educated at the primary school. Their life changes in 1930. Mary Carlson, who is a sister of Padraic Cleary, helps them to move to Australia, to Droghead. Meggie who is twenty years old now falls in love with Ralph de Bricassart. He is the parish priest. Now Mr Cleary wears the trousers in the house. When Mary dies he has money from Ralph, that came to them as an inheritance. The sons and Meggie starts their own lifes. Some of them die tragically, Meggie marries and has a daughter called Justyna and one son. Everything starts once again. The feelings such as love, joy and sorrow takes place in their lifes.
As far as I am concerned it is a really fascinating book. I think that McCullough didn't believe that it was her duty to make anyone feel happier or to lift anyone's heart with beautiful words.
In my opinion, she noticed that people often only discover the truth about themselves or about life in general when they are scared out of their minds, when thay are faced with some kind of problem.
From my point of view, some of the events took place in McCullough's life and that is why I was unable to put that book down and I am sure that the book is worth reading.
The truth, when disclosed at the end, seems to belong to a slick thiller rather than to the work of emotional or spiritual impact that McCullough has written