I initially read it in a Russian translation, which must’ve smoothed over the badness – cos I didn’t figure out what on earth Germaine Greer meant by the titular quote
After looking into the original i, indeed, found the the writing flowery&/questioning why on Earth this super hottie doesn’t;t ditch the robe& Run off to Tinseltown.
but the gruesome female realities stayed with me./ I read this @16 (while being a far more clued lassie than i;d have preferred ) it was still unflinchingly graphic in its; description of Maggie being marital-raped 3(!)times in/a row on her wedding night< leaving/ her in so much pain/that she cannot move &must share the bed with her internal batterer. It later goes into why it hurts this much : <the spouse uses 30s condoms . When she later tricks him into baby making <<the ordeal goes down easier.
Bizarro graphic element was the……….tit-f*cking..which the husband Contends with out of his kind heart(lol) to spare her more intercourse horror. Weirdly, in the TV version -they pushed his homosocial nature far enough to almost seem closeted .
Colleen was a strange wench with a strange writing style .It was both incredibly good &Incredibly awful simultaneously. Her talent lay in creating such a vivid fiery atmosphere ,that the soap opera somehow managed to transcend itself. There;s no other author like her .
The reason she belongs on my man-hating blog : is the lady herself +the reason for her choosing this plot. She was rather a character:
A Cambridge neuroscientist in 60s ::she found herself not being paid the family wage the men were -even after Equal PAy came in. she turned to writing to supplement her life as a single female. She chose romance as in inroad allocated to lady authors ,^she chose this story as it reflects her own family history . THere really was a priest,who poached the wealth which shoulda belonged to the family, from a rich old lady. Sexually Ignorant Maggie- was her mother. Dane was her brother. She wrote herself in _as the rebellious Justine. The Maori connection was also there: Colleen is 1/4 Maori
@the heart of it all SHE WISHED TO EXPLORE THE CHARACTER OF A SACRIFICIAL WOMAN ( as she was nothing like that herself).
The miniseries sported an epic fail of a miscast for the Priest. Nowhere near hot enough+ too old+ a softie. + acting range running the gamut from X to Z . . .Book Ralph was a haughty, *knows he’s hot to trot* type of meanie with a cold, ambitious drive, who GETS TO HAVE IT ALL IN THE END. > While the actor looks like he hugs Teddy bears in bed.. &Boy did they flub those nude, semi_nude scenes……….not least of all cause Richie Chamberlain shoulda been sent off for a 40 y.o.Virgin – style depilation!~Meggie expressly finds in the book – that she was revolted by Luke’s body hair &turned on by Ralph’s smoothness. Sporting the pellet of a dead ferret on his chest DOES NOT an EPIC HOTTIE make .~! & how does Meggie not cough up hairballs |gross|
In the book he’s character inconsistent:
Wherein Ralph + Meggie proceed to boink each others’brains out for a week. in near total solitude
You’d think that the same guy, who was worldy enough to
A)contemplate the ins & outs of ways in which a priest could sex discreetly
B)educate Meggie about menARCHE
c)scheme, flirt `then drop his pants in front of the rich lady
d)not be dumb enough to get caught in the midst on hanky-panky, young
E)not put-out for the rich lady, keeping her nice&hungry
……be bright enough to work @not knocking his beloved, errr–groomed object of desire up…after she came this close to dying in childbirth a mere 4 months prior…@which event his Eminence was PRESENT + biting his nails. I mean, Meggie’s thick-as-a-rock spouse [who was ignorant of intercourse anguish not being limited to 1 time] had enough mental presence to use ‘French letters’ (1st time i heard that euphemism of a century)
“well, remember that remember that bareback bumping +grinding In the loveshack on Matlock Island? ” ~`~~paraphrasing again, but it IS sorta written across Rachel Ward’s face….
The miniseries does have 1 of many major upsides over the book.
1) Maggie is SPUNKY. She’s forceful in her tirades. My fave is:
“Yeah, yeah, you love me. And God more than me. And yourself you love most of all, you stupid, *hard-t0 get* prick!!.
And speaking of pricks,/,why won;t you gimme yours!? you bloody vagina-tease, you”
^paraphrasing a little :-]}D
2)Casting, for the most part , is spot on . Barbara Stanwyck didn’t just kill that role/./.she buried it 6 under feet under, with a golden shovel
3)it looks & feels beautiful & filmic
4)Loooooove Justine,+ Ralph’s friend+boss
However, it does gloss over the aforementioned female-truth realities.
You see, those truth-bombs’re the reason for this post.
Coleen came across as an unlabelled-Radfem. She was crass, brash, relied on her brains to get herself places instead of her privates [as a woman ought to] , forewent pro-creating , didn’t marry until she was 42 & set for life . Knew the reality of being a large gal &mother-bullying stemming from that , alloting her station in life & death (they mentioned it IN HER EULOGY *facepalm* ) [i’m a believer in all obesity being inflammation due to contaminted food sources
Hilariously (&tragically) she kicked the lucky guy out on her deathbed! Cause he had a mistress!! LOl
She also wrote a scathing, honest, irrevent radfem-style of an autobiography..in which she revealed her mother tracking to get an illegal & badly botched abortion..which led to (likely) a hysterectomy or some such, limiting her offspring to 2, closely spaced babies, who were pro-totypes for Dane +Justine
Peppered all thru Thornbirds’re child & adult woman-daily-horrors. It’s a reel, starting from Fee not loving Meggie for being a girl (but not for the usual reason ). _It’s because she only sees her growing up to face the same bone-grinding oppression.
..to Fee not hating bang-bang-squirting “Paddie was gentle”, but glad to avoid when he fell asleep _ to avoid yet more children ( she ends up having 9+several miscarriages).(for which she counts herself lucky!). If not for the 1st 2 years during which Paddie considered himself lowly for her noble status – to place his paws on her – that no.”d rise
…to Frank being mad-as-Hell @stepdaddy for impregnating Mummy for a 7th baby
+ many others. like Fee’s chronic exhaustion -due to her 6 sons not lifting a finger at home, with only the 4 y.o. Meggie to rely on. this + her depression + eventually, alienation from Meggie ,goes away when she ascends back up in the world. At which point she gleefully ditches all housework & even feigning interest in the new, last of the brood, twins/.
All the while, Male prairie violence hangs over Fee+Meggie slaving away @home. {they either keep a rifle, or maybe 1 son around?or both}
Ralph finds it so very easy to tether Meggie from 10 y.o. to his sorry self – as she’s desperately unloved by everyone but Frank, who leaves home early, + overworked. He convinces the family to raise her like a Lady >sending her to school & taking riding lessons. <MARY v. astutely terms this a form of hands-off pedophile grooming ( aka emotional molestation.
#maggie is a horny being, not limiting her fixation on Ralphie-boy to poems +flowers. She primarily wishes to TAP THAT THING real Bad:__) Once she does that >her hetherto relentless drive switches off for good. WHich aligns my theory on female hetero- – being nothing but a case of sniffing out the right Baby Daddy/ After she pregnates with Ralphie’s spawn – her reaction to the only session of humpy shennanigan they ever conduct, doesn’t travel beyond ‘women can go without for a long time – but hey! nice when it happens’. *Luke manipulates her into marriage by dragging out the foreplay
∏all such nitty-gritty detailing grounds the saga & turns it into the same “melodrama becomes art” type of fiction – as Young Philadelphians
Kaguya ~ was the name of an extraordinary wee mouse: one that had no father. A Japanese experiment conducted 2004> unlocked the parthenogenesis potential of mammals (blocked by males)
It proved that we no longer 'need' them for the one thing they ever held any value in.
Even more outstanding was the fact that the lifespan of fatherless mice was 1/4 longer
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2 thoughts on “the best BAD book ever written”
TV DeBricassar was mangled as a character to the point of lack of recognition
Book version was a fairly well-realised, realistic character. In that:
#he was on the Ace spectrum: had no urge to beat off, didn’t find celibacy a drag; found sexual people to have an affliction. he got off on BEING salivated over
#his personality was consistent with high-aiming climbers. Warmth towards Meggie was an exception proving the rule. :
He didn’t even rule out sleeping with Mary ,if only she were not so unattractive
If another Opp for making it Big had presented itself: he’d burn the robe to cinders & run after the chariot
TV DeBricassar was mangled as a character to the point of lack of recognition
Book version was a fairly well-realised, realistic character. In that:
#he was on the Ace spectrum: had no urge to beat off, didn’t find celibacy a drag; found sexual people to have an affliction. he got off on BEING salivated over
#his personality was consistent with high-aiming climbers. Warmth towards Meggie was an exception proving the rule. :
He didn’t even rule out sleeping with Mary ,if only she were not so unattractive
If another Opp for making it Big had presented itself: he’d burn the robe to cinders & run after the chariot
#His life partner is Vittorio
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in fact, that overtly tense nakkid scene proved that he physically could not nail Mary : “See? i’m flaccid” – so she’d back the hell off
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