[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 you have begun it." The declaration has been echoed by so many commentators (as if other words had failed them) and used with such extravagance (one of them "scarcely ate or slept for two days") that it has become a phenomenon of its own. (p. 15)

[Eliot Fremont-Smith] found The Thorn Birds "a fine book," with a "refreshing wholesomeness," but it didn't make him laugh or cry, and he could put it down, he said, "because it is, after all, a romance." At the same time, he acknowledged that something "spurs the reader on"—specifically, a style "driven by a curiosity of mind, a caring for the subject, and some great energy within the author" [see excerpt above].

While the...