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The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough.
Products may contain comprehensive summaries, analysis, notes, articles, essays,
lesson plans and more. See below for details on what is included.
Colleen McCullough's 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds, became an international publishing sensation as its sales climbed past the seven-million mark. This saga of three generations in an Irish Catholic fam...
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In the following review, Clemons provides a brief analysis of The Thorn Birds and commentary on the novel's popular appeal.
It has, as they say, everything: three generations of suffering (from...
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In the following excerpt, Bridgwood explores characteristics of the family saga genre found in The Thorn Birds. According to Bridgwood, the presentation of extended historical processes in the novel i...
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In the following excerpt, Kaplan identifies elements of fantasy and female sexuality in romance literature through analysis of The Thorn Birds. Kaplan draws attention to the novel's incest moti...
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In the following essay, Morris identifies conventional American literary themes in The Thorn Birds and considers McCullough's treatment of social, racial, and gender issues as a source of the n...
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In the following review, Lehmann-Haupt approves of The Thorn Birds as a good example of predictable escapist fiction.
Going over the notes I kept while reading The Thorn Birds—and there were ma...
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In the following excerpt, DeMarr provides a critical overview of The Thorn Birds, including analysis of thematic concerns, narrative style, and feminist interpretations of the novel.
McCullough'...
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In the following review, Kroll commends McCullough's "touching" romantic world view and prose, but criticizes the excessive scope of The Thorn Birds and its monotonous passages.
B...
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In the following interview, McCullough comments on her writing, the creation of The Thorn Birds, and book critics.
She chain smokes Carleton cigarettes as she works at the typewriter, and when Colleen...
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In the following essay, Cassill offers insight into McCullough's views on writing and the editorial process behind the publication of The Thorn Birds.
Even though Colleen McCullough has been wr...
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In the following review, Lehmann-Haupt views An Indecent Obsession as an improvement over The Thorn Birds but asserts that the novel lacks depth.
Michael is the unknown quantity. Michael seems well en...
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In the following essay, Sutherland discusses the publishing history of The Thorn Birds and the novel's great popular appeal.
In the New York Times Book Review's survey of the decade�...
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Critical Essay by Anita Brookner
"Something I can get my teeth into", the woman in the library said to me the other day. The analogy with eating is fairly important, as is the grass-root...
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Critical Essay by Eliot Fremont-smith
The Thorn Birds is the saga of the Clearys, primarily of Fee Cleary and her daughter Meggie. It is also the story of an ambitious Catholic priest, Ralph de Bricas...
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Critical Essay by Alice K. Turner
"Happy families are all alike," wrote Tolstoy at the beginning of Anna Karenina, "but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." ...
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Critical Essay by Webster Schott
Miss McCullough's plan [in "The Thorn Birds"] is to trace three generations of a New Zealand family, especially the Cleary women: Fee, Meggie and ...
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Critical Essay by Amanda Heller
[The Thorn Birds] promises romance, sentiment, history, the appeal of a faraway setting.
You may ask: Is The Thorn Birds a good book? No, it isn't. It is, in fac...
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Critical Essay by Pat Caplan
Promoters are calling [The Thorn Birds] the Australian Gone With The Wind.
The Thorn Birds does resemble Gone With The Wind in containing a feisty Irish paterfamilias, a l...
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Critical Essay by Ruth Mathewson
[The success of The Thorn Birds] seems to reflect the accuracy for most readers of the jacket-blurb assurance that "there is simply no way to put it down once y...
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Teaching The Thorn Birds
All teaching products sold separately.
The Thorn Birds Lesson Plans contain 130 pages of teaching material, including:
Colleen McCullough
Critical Review by Walter Clemons
