Customer Reviews

The Touch: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Ignore the silly cover and you will find a well-written, enjoyable historical romance by someone who knows how to do this kind of thing very well. Actually, "The Touch" is not quite a romance (I seem to have been influenced by the yearning profile on the cover as well) but something more interesting. Read on.

Rich goldminer and entrepreneur Alexander Kinross writes to a Scottish relative for a bride. He gets Elizabeth Drummond, who at 16 has lived a joyless life. Alexander is handsome and charismatic, but contrary to what might be expected, she is repelled by him. He's sorry she doesn't like him, but since he has a very satisfactory mistress all he expects of Elizabeth is that she do her duty. Although she lives in a grand house opulently furnished, Elizabeth's life in Australia is as repressed as her life in Scotland was. That is, until she meets Ruby, her husband's mistress.

Ruby and Alexander love each other deeply, but the fact that she runs a suspect hotel and has a son by a Chinese businessman means no wedding bells for them. Next to Alexander, Ruby is the town's most influential citizen (with her Chinese ex-lover a close third), so it is certain that Elizabeth and Ruby will meet. They do, and like each other immediately.

This fine how-do-you-do is the crux of an entertaining story that will have you looking forward to the next chapter. Set between 1872 and 1900, this booming period of Australian history provides a lively background for the appealing characters' surprising but believable lives. It is a pleasure to see Colleen McCullough back at the sort of fiction which flows from her pen so easily as to seem almost organic. Unlike her Roman series where historical detail began to smother characterization and action, `The Touch" is bound to please from first page to last.

I was so excited to hear of this book as I am an enormous fan of Colleen McCullough's Australian epics ("The Thorn Birds", "Morgan's Run") and other non-Caesarean works (although I like historical fiction in general I could just never get excited about the Caesar series). On the rare occasions that McCullough publishes a non-Caesarean book it is very much a book "event" for me. As expected, I really enjoyed this. McCullough continues her tradition of impeccable historical research and gifted storytelling plus the plot is great and well-thought out. Basically the story is about the various rather complicated relationships between a group of highly likable characters that you can really care about, all taking place at a very interesting time in history (late 19th century). I personally don't want to give anymore than that away in case, like me, you don't want to know exactly what to expect as you read (for instance, I usually don't read flyleafs). However, I believe the reviewer immediately below me did a great job of laying it out in a bit more detail if you're interested in knowing more about the plot before you buy the book.

Although this isn't my favorite of her books (I like "The Thorn Birds" and "Morgan's Run" better), I still feel this book stands head and shoulders above the majority of the historical epics out there (well, I also adore "Gone with the Wind" and "Through a Glass Darkly"). So if you enjoyed her previous books, Caesar related or not, or any of the other books I've mentioned, I think you will definitely like this as well.

Of course, if you haven't ever read "The Thorn Birds" or "Morgan's Run" you may want to pick one or both of those up first - they're really fantastic.

I read Colleen McCullough's THE THORN BIRDS long before it was a mini-series and thought it was a masterpiece. I haven't changed my mind because McCullough's novel about the universal human condition strikes a chord in most people. The passionate story, spanning three generations, describes the complex Clery family on a sheep ranch in Australia. One of the most memorable parts of the book is the forbidden love of Meggie and Ralph de Briscassart, a priest. McCullough is still a very good author, but THE TOUCH is a notch down from her other works. It simply lacks passion.
In the latter novel Andrew Kinross, after leaving his native Scotland as a youth, made a fortune in Australia in the late 1800s. Years later he wrote to a relative to send for his 16 year-old cousin, Elizabeth, to be his bride. After an arduous journey from Scotland, she arrived in Sydney. Upon seeing Andrew for the first time, she experienced revulsion, a feeling which remained throughout their long, loveless marriage.
At times glimpses of the old McCullough surface, especially when she graphically describes Jade's, the nursemaid, revenge for Anna's murder.
Most of the characters are not outstanding. Of them all, tough-talking, generous, Ruby, stands out. She serves in the unlikely position of Andrew's mistress and Elizabeth's best friend. Also the off-spring of the main characters fail to shine in any particular way.
If you want to be entertained rather than stirred, choose THE TOUCH.

Alexander Kinross is a proud Scot who, with his vast store of intelligence, leaves his home at age fifteen, travels around the world, and eventually arrives at the new continent of Australia (New South Wales) and founds a gold-mining town. He makes fortunes, but in order to secure his position in the world, he sends for a young Scottish bride, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond. Elizabeth was raised in a devout Protestant village where she lived shielded from the outside world, so the move from Scotland to Australia is a tremendous eye-opener, both physically and mentally, for the young girl. From the start, Elizabeth takes a disliking to Alexander, but she performs her duties as a wife. No matter how hard Alexander tries to please his young wife, she is unresponsive, so he turns to his mistress, the seductive Ruby Costevan, for sexual comfort. The Kinrosses live in a grand mansion in the town of Kinross, but Elizabeth is not pleased by the material things that Alexander supplies her. Rather, she seeks someone that she can truly love. "How can I look into those diabolical eyes and tell their owner that he is not the husband I would choose?"

The book continues with daily life and hardships, including the birth of Eleanor (Nell) who is eerily similar to Alexander and poor Anna whose short life is, it itself, a great tragedy. The book poignantly covers a span of about thirty years, chronicling the hopes, the joys, and the misfortunes of the Kinrosses and the people surrounding them. The main characters come alive with rich descriptions and frequent dialogue. Alexander, despite his penchant for material success, is a character to be pitied because he truly realizes his mistakes with Elizabeth years into the marriage, and by then, Elizabeth has already given her heart away to someone. Although Elizabeth sometimes strikes me as meek, she bears so much suffering before she finally attains true happiness near the end of the novel. If the reader does not find their lives interesting, there are also Nell, Anna, and Ruby's illegitimate son Lee whose stories can be a book in its own. Nell is too intelligent for her own good and strives to be a doctor, and Anna's life is cursed from the beginning. Lee is the handsome half-Chinese son whose heart is embroiled in a moral struggle.

There are some sections of the book that are downright dry and uninteresting. They are mainly the parts about historical events, but skipping the sections do not detract from the overall effect of the book.

The Touch is an emotional saga that focuses on the interwining of the Kinrosses and the Costevans. Some chapters are a bit verbose, but as a whole, I found this book to be an enjoyable read. There are cheerful moments, and there are heart-breaking moments. I hope the reader enjoys tracing their turbulent lives as much as I did.

Having just reread The Thorn Birds again recently, I decided to check out one of her more recent works and picked up The Touch. The summary on the book jacket sounded interesting but I wasn't far into the book when it was clear that this was no Thorn Birds or Morgan's Run.

I found myself actually shocked in places that the writing could be so bad from this talented author. In one scene, she has Ruby greeting Alexander "cooly yet warmly"...WHAT? She also conveniently puts Alexander in a bar with a couple of California miners who are unrealistically well-versed in geology - knowing all of the different kinds of rock and the geological time period in which it is from, they sounded more like geological graduate students than miners. And then after of course smelling gold and striking it rich, he sells his share to the other miners and leaves for the uncertain fate that awaits him in New South Wales. Who would abandon a gold mine that is far from being tapped out for a gamble in a place he has never seen? Well, Alex Kinross if this is to be believed.

Alexander's whole backstory was one big long "tell" with no "show" -he went here and did this, he went there and saw that, he felt this way, learned these things, etc. This left me as a reader seriously uninterested as it felt like someone recounting where they went on vacation. Huge yawn factor. And the fact that everywhere he went, he seemed to find some priceless piece of art that he sent back to England only to find that what he bought for a pittance was actually some rare and valuable item - like a Ming vase - get real! And don't even get me started on the whole thing about him being able to literally smell gold underground, oh, and his unaccounted-for knowledge of literally EVERYTHING from gold mining to civil engineering to sanitation facilities to railroad contruction...the list goes on.

And with Ruby, it was even worse. She looks at herself in the mirror, tells herself to think about her past, and then proceeds to ponder, in first person, her rape at age 11 by her brother, running away right after "her flower was plucked" and being a mistress for an old man, and all of the other things that happened to bring her to the place in life where she was as she looked in that mirror. Totally unbelievable! I mean, can anyone ever honestly see themselves looking in the mirror and saying that and then thinking "I was raped by my brother.....had my flower plucked....then I became mistress to old man.....since my flower was already plucked....then I inherited money from the old man....and the hackneyed plot device goes on. Then we are hauled just as abruptly back into the current time as we were hauled out of it into her past.

After enduring cardboard characters, silly plot lines and plot "devices", and lengthly authorial lectures on mining, gold, engineering, and the like, I finally threw in the towel about 1/2 way through and gave up. If you want to read a compelling story of a man who came from nothing and struck it rich by mining, read Sidney Sheldon's Master of the Game. It's not the Great American Novel, but I found it to be much better written and more compelling than The Touch.

I have been a huge Colleen McCullough fan since The Thorn Birds was first published and have read all of her books (short of the Caesar series which I have yet to tackle). I particularly enjoyed Morgan's Run and have looked forward to this second in the series. However I found it disappointing. In many ways the writing seemed rushed, almost like there was a publisher's deadline to meet, and I thought many of the characters were two dimensional, particularly Elizabeth (although Ruby is wonderfully written and truly comes to life). McCullough does little to show us or help us to feel the motivations of Alexander and Elizabeth, instead repeating in very simplistic terms why they are the way they are. Anna's situation is described in very simplistic, and totally unrealistic, fashion. And I take particular issue with the way McCullough portrays Alexander's actions at the end, a neat wrap-up that serves her purpose, but totally unbelievable and out of character given his nature and personality.

I don't want to give away any details of the story or the specifics of what I found unrealistic, because even with all these faults, the story is compelling and McCullough has you turning pages to find out what is about to happen next (although it is not hard to guess what's coming). Even at her worst (and I am sorry to say that this book is not up to her usual excellence) McCullough's writing is better and more readable than many lesser authors. I wouldn't say don't read it - just don't expect it to be Morgan's Run, and certainly not The Thorn Birds. And at least for my part, I was hoping for more history intertwined in the story - this is all saga, a la Howard Fast.

Colleen McCullough confuses me. I simply cannot fathom how the same author can write a literate, enthralling work such as "The Thornbirds", and a failed Barbara Bradford style "The Touch".

Of course, Ms. McCullough has been confusing me for most of her career. Like most readers, I first became aware of her through "The Thornbirds" which became one of my all-time favorite books over 25 years ago. After reading that monumental bestseller, I (like many other readers) looked for other works by McCullough. "Tim" was no "Thornbirds" but at least was literate. The "First Man in Rome" trilogy was well-written, well researched and densely plotted, but (at least for me) a bit hard to follow since so many character's names were so similar.

Looking at the list of McCullough's other titles, I realize I stopped reading her until last year's "Morgan's Run". That was a fairly enjoyable book, but certainly showed none of "The Thornbirds" brilliance.

Now comes "The Touch", touted on it's cover as another "Thornbirds", since it is a 2 generation family saga set in Australia. Well, ok, they do have that much in common. McCullough even goes so far as to plagiarise herself in one of the 2nd generation's characters. But, really, that is as far as the resemblance goes.

"The Touch" follows Scottish emigree Alexander Kinross, his "pig in a poke" bride Elizabeth, and his mistress Ruby Costevan, as well as their various offspring. The characterisation is rather thin; Elizabeth is repeatedly referred to as fey by the other characters, yet as written she never seems to give any indication of otherworldliness, Lee, Ruby's son, is too perfect, and the choices made by the protagonists often seem out-of-character. The plot is more tame romance than saga, & is more than a tad predictable. Greatest of sins in historical novels, the research is scattershot; page 33, which takes place in 1872, has Alexander saying "The cliffs are early Triassic sandstone laid atop Permian coal measures, under which lie the granites, shales & limestones of Devonian & Silurian times. The very tops of some of the mountains to the north are a thin layer of basalt poured out of some massive volcano-the Tertiary icing on the Triassic cake...!" All very impressive, except those names of geologic ages were not in use in 1872.

The greatest fault of "The Touch" is it's writing. McCullough seems to have lost the touch (pun intended) exhibited in "The Thornbirds". This book simply isn't engrossing, it isn't particularly intelligent, and it's characters never assume lives of their own in the readers minds. All of which makes me wonder if McCullough has been allowing an assistant or ghost-writer to do her writing for her in recent years.

This book certainly had me turning pages to find out what would happen, but it was ultimately disappointing. It had none of the richly-drawn characters that made The Thorn Birds such absorbing reading, and the plot was laughable in places. Alexander's decision in particular was facile, unbelievable and totally out of keeping with his (entirely one-dimensional) personality. The Nell character is clearly borrowed from Justine (Thorn Birds) and we are given absolutely no insight in to why two of the key characters fall in love - it appears to be entirely superficial because they have no more than four or five conversations before running off to live happily ever after. I really get the impression she just did this for the money.

We loved "Morgan's Run" and eagerly anticipated her sequel. This is a poor second. One of the characters relationship to Morgan is mentioned in passing, but it reallly has nothing to do with this silly plot. This is more unbelievable soap opera stuff than good novel writing. Don't waste your money or your time. She also gets bogged down in technical stuff about mining and inventions that can be skipped.

I picked up this book in Nice hoping it would get me through the last week of my vacation. But no, only 2 days! I think the author's name was listed incorrectly on the front of the book. It should have read Danielle Steele instead of Colleen McCullough. Being a huge fan of Thorn Birds, this novel was thoroughly disappointing. Where the main character in Thorn Birds grew up and learned a thing or two along the way, the main character in The Touch just seemed to ride the tide of the other character's opinions. Overall, I think she gave women a bad rep! Won't even take the book as a "pass around book" for my book club!