Colleen McCullough - The Thorn Birds

I first read my father's copy of the Thorn Birds as a teenager and have read it many times since I purchased my own paperback.  With each reading, I collected new insights and recently, having just finished it, I wonder how to compress 591 pages into a single rant.

This time, I read it from a different perspective - with more depth & meaning and focused much on the story of Christianity that intertwines its pages.  The tale read like an old testament story with lots of wisdom to learn from.  Or is it the effect of aging because as we mature we are wont to look at things in a much more different light - with an eye on our mortality - than we did during our idealistic youth. I am certain that were I to read the book five years from now, the things that would strike me most would be different.  When AM saw me holding the book, she said...Oh isn't that the story about the priest and the girl.  I guess for her, the story line that meant the most was...forbidden but enduring love. It is amazing...isn't it that despite all wisdom against the contrary the main women in the book hungered after men that they couldn't hold onto as they were already spoken for?

The Thornbirds weaves a story about families and lineages that must perpetuate themselves or die.  Families that make mistakes and mothers that love some children more than others. The thesis is that parents love their children equally - but differently.  However the antithesis is that it is possible to love one child more than all others.  It does not necessarily mean the other children are hated - it just means that one child is loved more and the child who is loved 'less' senses it.

Like many books written by women, this book has strong women - who survive whatever cards are dealt them. What is also amazing is that this family perpetuates itself through the girl child even though the name comes down the male line - Armstrong, Cleary, O'Neill and Hartheim.

At the story's heart is the love of Meghan Cleary, who can never possess the man she desperately adores,  Father Ralph de Bricassart, who rises from parish priest to the inner circles of the Vatican...but whose passion for Meghan would follow him all the days of his life. I never quite understood how Father Ralph could have intercourse with Meghan and after all that, walk away from her. The call of God was strong...Yet even when he had followed his destiny to the church, he still was jealous that she found respite in another man. 

At this juncture in my life, I mused greatly about the character of God as portrayed in the book:-

      On the one hand we experience a God of forgiveness, in the face of sincere repentance. Ralph     broke all his vows - chastity, obedience and poverty - but was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt for as long as he lived that God was merciful and he rose to the highest echelons as Cardinal. After all, it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance...knowing that He loves us.  Dane was persuaded that God could forgive us anything...with no strings attached as He understood our frailties.

      On the other hand, we see the God of retribution - a jealous God - who punishes Fiona and Meghan by taking away the sons that meant the most to them, in the prime of their lives.  Sons they shouldn't have had in the first place. Doesn't the Bible remind us...Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap.

I am certain the author did not plan for the reader to spend too much time analysing God who was inevitable in the book at that time and place...That said, her juxtapositions of God struck me. Were I to choose, I would prefer Ralph and Dane's God - A God who is merciful to us, sinners...who understands that - when all is said & done - we are human afterall...for the bottom line is that, as Fiona muses, the seeds of our ruin are sown even before we are born. We cannot do anything about it really.

In a way, the climax of the book is about hope...about Justine and Rainer.  (Both unloved by those who bore them. Justine was a child of convenience who lived in Dane's shadow whereas Rainer was given up for adoption). I didn't regard them much the previous times that I read the book. The book is indeed about them and it is fitting they are the ones who perpetuate the family line albeit on a different continent. They represent  the stubbornness of love,  love that is patience and true love that endures and transcends all hurdles.  They represent the next generation that is perpetuated despite everything.  In essence, all things eventually work out for good. Isn't that wonderful and amazing?