Reading for Pleasure The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

Dear readers!
I want to discuss with you one of my favourite English- language books. It is The Thorn Birds written by Colleen McCullough .I recommended it last year. And today I wonder if you have  read it ,and if you liked it?

 I'd like to post some extracts from this novel. The pictures are not the illustration to this love story, but to my mind, they reflect the atmosphere of the story. So, let's enjoy the beautiful pieces of painting and the wonderful words from the novel!

Painter: Emile Vernon

Father Ralph stretched out in his favorite chair, staring at the fire, smoking a cigarette and smiling.

…Meggie. The sweetest, the most adorable little girl he had ever seen; hair of a color which defied description, not red and not gold, a perfect fusion of both. And looking up at him with silver-grey eyes of such a lambent purity, like melted jewels.

Shrugging, he threw the cigarette stub into the fire and got to his feet. He was getting fanciful in his old age; melted jewels, indeed!

  

Painter:Nadia Lozano

Now Maggie is 15

Not that she was a saint, or indeed anything more than most. Only that she never complained, that she had the gift—or was it the curse?—of acceptance.

She turned her gaze to him and out of her pain gave him a smile of absolute, overflowing love, nothing in it held back, the taboos and inhibitions of womanhood not yet a part of her world. To be so loved shook him, consumed him, made him wish to the God Whose existence he sometimes doubted that he was anyone in the universe but Ralph de Bricassart. Was this it, the unknown thing? Oh, God, why did he love her so? But as usual no one answered him; and Meggie sat still smiling at him.

Painter:Nadia Lozano

Meggie is 17

But it was at Meggie everyone stared the longest. Perhaps ..the Gilly dressmaker had put her heart into Meggie’s dress. It was sleeveless and had a low, draped neckline.. Of crepe geor-gette, a heavy chiffon, the dress was only slightly fitted at the waist, but sashed around the hips with the same material. It was a dusky, pale pinkish grey, the color that in those days was called ashes of roses; between them the dressmaker and Meggie had embroidered the entire gown in tiny pink rosebuds. And Meggie had cut her hair in the closest way she could to the shingle creeping even through the ranks of Gilly girls. It curled far too much for fashion, of course, but it suited her better short than long.