The death of Australian author Colleen McCullough , this year sparked a wave of nostalgia for her best-selling outback tale of forbidden love, The Thorn Birds. Fiona McGarry looks at five of the best in that most maligned of literary genres, the ‘bonkbuster’.
The Thorn Birds (1977) – Colleen McCullough
Controversy over an obituary in The Australian, which began by describing her as “plain of feature, and certainly overweight”, can’t overshadow Colleen McCullough’s contribution to the grand bonkbuster tradition. The Thorn Birds (1977) captivated generations with its fast-paced account of lust, religious vows and sheep farming in the Irish-Australian community. Often described as the Australian Gone with the Wind, the book charts the illicit affair between virginal, naïve Meggie Cleary and the dashing Fr Ralph de Bricassart. It’s a story of forbidden longing, stolen glances and suggestive exchanges in the confession box, until the pair finally get it on – 200 pages into the story. Meggie gets married, Ralph becomes an archbishop and, spoiler alert, there’s no happy ever after. McCullough’s day-job as a neurophysiologist pales a bit beside her writing achievements. She claimed to write between 15,000 and 30,000 words per day. The Thorn Birds has sold more than 30 million copies in 20 languages and has never been out of print.
Lace (1982) – Shirley Conran
Another key exponent of the bonkbuster, Shirley Conran says she wrote the epic shag-fest Lace in order to educate schoolgirls on the realities of sex. Conran’s heroines are career women Kate, Maxine, Judy, and Pagan, who come a bit unstuck when a beautiful young ingénue, Lili, gathers them together to famously ask: “Which one of you bitches is my mother?” No 1980s taboo is left unturned as the four women deal with marriage breakdown, abortion, lesbianism, one-night stands and back-stabbing colleagues, all the while keeping their improbably large shoulder pads and lacquered hair in place. In the days when sex education was thin on the ground, Conran made sure Lace reached the right target. “I thought, I’m going to make it so that school girls aren’t allowed to read it and then it will be read by schoolgirls, and of course Lace was passed around schools in a brown paper bag and it reached the audience I wanted it to reach.” With sales of three million in 30 countries, Lace is still an all-time classic and was republished in 2012 for a new generation.
The Lucky Santangelo Series (1981-2013) – Jackie Collins
Dismissing the ‘Fifty Shades’ school of erotic fiction as ‘disgusting and ridiculous’, Jackie Collins creates heroines who definitely don’t get spanked. One of Collins’s most popular creations Italian-American mob boss, Lucky Santangelo, is as feisty as they come and more likely to dish out punishment than to take it. She first appeared in the 1981 novel Chances, which charted the rise of her gangster father, Gino, to the top of the mafia tree. Described by the New York Daily News as ‘so hot, it will have to be printed on asbestos’, Lucky followed in 1985, and saw the heroine struggle to defend her father’s honour, reel in her man and keep tabs on a sprawling criminal empire. The latest episode in the Santangelo saga was penned in 2013. Confessions of a Wild Child is a prequel tracing Lucky’s misspent youth. It was followed in 2014 by the Lucky Santangelo Cookbook featuring classic Italian family dishes, designed to be served and eaten Mafiosa style.
Platinum (2007) – Jo Rees
Inspired by the original bonkbusters of thirty or more years ago, Jo (Joanna) Rees takes the genre into the 21st century. “I was at secondary school in Essex in the 1980s,” she says. “And I devoured Lace, Flowers in the Attic, Riders and Hollywood Wives. I can’t help feeling nostalgic for those big “bonkbusters” that kept me awake all night, which is why I wrote one – but with a twist.” Platinum brings together three unlikely allies: Frankie Willis, a computer nerd-turned-stewardess; Peaches Gold, an LA brothel madam; and Lady Emma Harvey, an English aristocrat and socialite. Enter the dastardly, Yuri Khordinsky, a ruthless Russian oligarch, and a steamy tale of wrong-doing and revenge ensues. Rees is enjoying a stellar career after a varied professional life that has seen her writing promos for Sugar Puffs boxes and running her own sandwich delivery business. She has also co-authored a series of rom-coms and the best-selling tale of date-night drama, We’re Going on a Bar Hunt, with her husband Emlyn.
Temptation Island (2012) – Victoria Fox
As an editorial assistant at a London publishing house, Victoria Fox, struggled to find novels that appealed to her 20-something generation of celebrity-obsessed readers. She spotted a gap in the market for “a truly exciting, shocking, racy bonkbuster like the ones I’d enjoyed as a teen, a proper brick of a book packed with sex and scandal,” and promptly made her own writing debut with Harlequin, the umbrella brand for Mills & Boon. But Fox’s characters are a little less backward about coming forward than the stereotypical Mills & Boons doormat, who swoons into the arms of the all-conquering hero. Instead, her leading ladies are celebrities and superstars, already living the dream. In true escapist tradition, Temptation Island is set on a secret Indian Ocean paradise. But LA wild child Aurora Nash; actress Stevie Speller; and supermodel Lori Garcia – all taking a break from the glare of celebrity – don’t get long to sit and contemplate the sunset, as they get caught up in the Hollywood scandal of the century. A writer at the height of her career, Fox capture the essence of the bonkbuster genre, saying, “the only rule is that everything should be big, bold, daring and dangerous”.
