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 long-suffering mother, and a set of red-headed twins. It also features a sexy priest, a huge fortune, and three generations of family on a sprawling estate. And how little it makes of these possibilities!

In scene after scene, McCullough moves to the edge of conflict, peeks over, then shies away. The book opens on Meggie Cleary's fourth birthday, when her brothers wreck her new doll. The parents admonish the boys not to misbehave again. They never do. Paddy Cleary's sister summons his family to live on her Australian sheep station, Drogheda, because she has $13 million she might leave them when she dies. Father Ralph de Bricassart takes away most of the Clearys' inheritance, and how do they react? "We're going...