The great Australian writer Colleen McCullough She came across literature with that factor of unpredictability for a doctor like her. He started writing around forty. But in the end, considering his great career and his extensive bibliography, he can undoubtedly be considered one of the sources of inspiration for his compatriot, today a triumphant novelist: Kate morton.
Because the echo of one and the other, with the exception of their corresponding epoch, is entirely comparable. Collen moved everyone from his hawthorn bird and Kate reinvents herself as the great bestseller that she already is with similar tremendously emotional stories.
But the case of Collen is not exactly that of the author who exploits a formula for success. When you read the first novels of romantic evocation in historical settings, and then you go on to discover a Collen of the XNUMXst century, capable of proposing black or science fiction plots or spread out in a brilliant historical saga of antiquity, there is no other than to recognize that taste for the search for new narrative horizons, so commendable in any type of creator.
So reading Collen McCullough is always a gratifying surprise that makes us constantly change the chip but that convinces in his more than twenty books.
Collen McCullough's Top 3 Recommended Novels
The first man of Rome
With absolute fidelity and historical rigor, Collen began with this novel a fascinating heptalogy on the future of the Roman Empire.
In this beginning of such an extensive and documented company, centered on the characters of Cayo Mario and Sila, with their epic confrontations for control of that empire that ruled the designs of the known world. Thanks to this detailed approach of the author to the lives of these two greats of the Empire, we immerse ourselves in that Roman policy not exempt from bloody struggles.
With her disseminating interest, the author treasures maps and real references of the evolution of the world in those days. In this way he achieves that magnetism of the lovers of this essential period of the West to which he captures, in his fictional aspect, many other readers who in the profusion of details know better and enjoy that necessary verisimilitude in the genres of historical fiction.
But beyond all these fundamentals that fully justify the reading, the introspection in Cayo Mario and Sila, with their very different ways of seeing the world and their different paths that led them to the top, will acquire a very special value to appreciate this historical period with tints of intrahistory from the first line.
on-off
The beginning of a great saga between the black novel and the scientific thriller. Many years after leaving her profession as a neurology doctor, Collen dared to follow in the footsteps of Robin cook to transfer his scientific knowledge to a suspenseful plot.
And of course, neurology is one of those areas in which as much, or perhaps less, is known about what is finally in the essence of these transcendent cells in human evolution. The victim from which Lieutenant Delmonicco's investigation starts is a woman who died in a medical center for neural research. Suspicion hangs over all those who work at that center. The reasons for ending the woman's life point to some hidden aspect of that investigation plan.
And from what it seems, everything indicates that the crimes have only just begun. Delmonicco's time trial investigation keeps us racing towards that great secret that someone tries to hide forever with death as a method.
The thorn bird
My mother was one of the regulars on the television series that scripted this novel. And the truth is that precisely because of that easy association with soap operas I had my prejudices with this plot.
But the novel is something else. Because we undertake a much richer reading in its contextualization, in the presentation of the characters. We live in those days, at the dawn of the XNUMXth century, in which moral standards are still very strict. And of course, when morality constrains, the need for rebellion and the most intense emotions, but frowned upon by the prevailing ethics, soar. The deep Australia is even more alien to any transforming intention in the social.
The character of that parish priest, Ralph de Bricassart, sounds familiar to all of us who are already a few years old, caught between his brilliant career in the clergy and his undeniable love for Meggie. Discovering this relationship and all the other details is always a great enjoyment. Because without a doubt we find a novel that, genres and tastes aside, is already a classic work of authentic culottes.
