To wonder WTF is wrong with Catherine Cookson

[JandamiHash]

I used to love Catherine Cookson adaptations when I was a teenager. LOVED them. Had loads of box sets and books. I recently discovered them on U and i’ve been watching a few and OMG they’re either all hysterically ridiculous, depressing or brutally violent. Or full of pedophiles

In The Girl the male love interest tells the female lead that she’s been “teasing him with that look ever since you first entered my yard”. Referring to when she was 10 and he was an adult! After losing several body parts in his pursuit for her love, the male love interest and the now grown up “tease” get together after her husband conveniently dies of cholera.

The Glass Virgin has a frizzy haired Emily Mortimer simpering around the North East, opting to be a peasant because she heard a second hand rumour that she isn’t part of her aristocratic family any more. She falls in love with a younger (and not terrible looking) Mr Bates from Downton Abbey, who has a (terrible) Irish accent but is called Manuel Mendoza?! Despite not being Spanish. Cue Emily Mortimer spending about an hour in total running through fields with a lamp shouting “Manuel! Manuel”. BTW Manuel first met her when she was 9 or 10, as her riding instructor, and she falls in love with him because he basically groomed her.

Tonight I’ve been utterly traumatised by the Dwelling Place - where a 16yo orphan, who lives in a cave with her siblings, is brutally raped in front of her little brother, is impregnated by her rapist, and then a couple of years later falls in love with him!! All whilst being perused by a bloke who was all “Im sexy and I love you, but I’m off to marry Hayley Cropper because her dad runs a mill and I’ll be in charge if I marry her, even though I hate her. I’ll pop in now and again to stroke your hand and sniff your hair”.

WTF is wrong with Catherine Cookson?! And also - what was wrong with teenage me that I found these romantic?

Yes I know these books are old as dirt but still, most were written in the 60’s, and I don’t think that even then it was acceptable to fall in love with your rapist or be attracted to 10yo girls.

I want to watch more but I think they’re too insane and unhinged for my liking.

In the 90s there was a novel by Janet Inglis, "Daddy's Girl". It would now be seen as romanticising an abusive relationship, but it was passed around our school.

Very interesting. This is spot on.

Op, I loved them as a teen too. I'm becoming more adverse to watching things like this as I get older though (38!) as I find it too distressing. As a teen, I guess we're all much more innocent. Life takes it toll and personal events and stories in the news show us how miserable things can get for women.

The Dwelling Place was good until the rapist returns from sea.

I think this is the one where Catherine Zeta Jones is supposedly a trollop

I misread the title, "Question about removal men - will they take me food shopping?"

⬆️ I was posting on an entirely different thread, don't know how I ended up here!!

Anyone remember The Thorn Birds? A big blockbuster of a book made into a TV series.
Plot is a catholic priest waits for a young girl to grow up, gets her pregnant, then goes back to the church to continue his career in the Vatican. They were supposedly soul-mates or some such tripe.

The Shell Seekers is a very loved book, yet the main character is a young girl when she climbs into the bed of her fathers friend.

I remember it. I remember the television series being advertised a lot on television and my Mum (a devout Catholic) would tut and quickly change the channel. Did you ever read/watch it? From what you've written, it does sound like tripe!

@EuclidianGeometryFan PLOT SPOILER ALERT......

Didn't the priest drown while swimming in the sea? Guess he pissed God off.

I was in a charity shop the other day and they had a copy of Lace.
I wish I'd bought it now 😂
"Which one of you bitches is my mother"

Were there ever any books about an adult woman perving on an underage boy and waiting for him to grow up to have sex with him?

There probably is......
The lonely married woman and her teenage sons best friend 🤔
I'd Google but I don't think I should put those words into my search history.

I had to stop reading Ian McEwen's 2022 novel Lessons. (Atonement author)
14 year old boy. His mother, his wife and the key one his 25 year old piano teacher have all ruined his life. It's dreadful, 70s soft porn script. Absolutely didn't seem 'true'.
And I'm totally not aware of my many male teen friends in the 80s having actually experienced anything like this rather than my female friends.
McEwen writes like he over heard 'banter' and wrote it up - she well fancy's you...

I can see that the reversal of sexes would be a male porn fantasy, rather than a reflection of a common reality like so much female fiction.

That was the son - he dies of a heart attack while swimming in the sea and then the father (the priest who has made it to the Vatican I think) dies of grief/also a heart attack. I was obsessed with the book back in the day.

Also I re-read My Sweet Audrina by Virginia Andrews not too long ago after loving it as a teenager. Good Lord ALL the trauma and the triggers and the sheer ANGST. It's awful!

There’s a Frasier episode along these lines which I think is distasteful. Frasier apparently lost his virginity to a piano teacher as a teen, told someone about it and they turned it into novel. Horrible episode. No way would it have been acceptable if the genders had been reversed.

@Elliania in my defense I have only read it once and not seen the TV adaptation 😂
Wasn't there an uncle who was suffocated by a giant hog?
Or am I getting my books confused?

Right now I'm going to embarrass myself be revealing my totally lame superpower of remembering useless trivia but forgetting where I left my shoes.

Yes, there's a bushfire on the property and one of the heroine's brothers goes out to fight it/check on the damage or something and disturbs a wild pig which gores him and then collapses on top of him after he's shot it a few times.

These were my introduction to "grown up" books when I was about 10 I think.
I thought that they were very romantic but with hindsight they were awful
How about "Liverpool Daisy" where the main character gets raped after being mistaken for a prostitute but then realises that its actually quite a nice and easy way to make money.

you need to take up writing yourself. Your opening post has had me roaring!

@Elliania please go on Mastermind and have The Thorn Birds as your specialist subject 😁

The priest in the Thornbirds was acted by Richard Chamberlain - a heartthrob at that time -he’d been DrKildare in the hospital series in the 60s
duckduckgo.com/?q=Richard+Chamberlain&cast_id=nm0000328&from=cast&ia=web

I wondered how on earth you could have misread the title that way 😂😂😂

Our Kate, is a good read about her childhood.