An Indecent Obsession (1981) combines several elements of Tim (1974) and The Thorn Birds but is more melodramatic and perhaps more unpleasant than either. It concerns a nurse, significantly named Honour, caring for six men who suffer various psychological and physical disorders in a tropical hospital ward at the end of World War II (and falling in love with, and having a brief love affair with, a newcomer to them). As in Tim there is much talk of brain and mental handicaps, and the central situation of a reserved woman who "thaws." As in The Thorn Birds, she (like Ralph de Bricassart) is torn between love and duty. In fact, she comes to feel that duty is "the most indecent obsession of all."

The Thorn Birds perhaps presages the Roman novels with its partial concentration upon the focus of one family caught up in the great sweep of...