If you're going to go through the trouble of plagiarising a really good book, why make your version stupid and crappy? That is the question that ran through my head as I was reading The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough, which is widely believed to be plagiarised from L.M. Montgomery's Blue Castle. And, I for one consider it to be a cheap rip-off. Perhaps I'm biased because Blue Castle is my security-blanket book. It's the book I read when I want to be comforted, I can read 6 times a year and never tire of it. Perhaps if it weren't so beloved to me I wouldn't have been so disgusted with the poor man's version. But McCullough took what is a sweet, magical little romance and made it crass, illogical, and mildly offensive.
I don't think the similarities are coincidence. Both stories are about poor, old maids who have been kept down, and written-off by their families. Both girls are considered plain and/or ugly by their family and always made to wear brown clothes. Both girls live with their mother and aunt. Both girls have a female cousin of the same age who is a classic beauty and soon to be married. Both girls discover a heart-related condition, the true nature of which they keep from their nosy and controlling family. The illnesses give both girls the courage to stand up for themselves and do what they want with their lives. In both cases that means proposing marriage to the man with the mysterious past who recently arrived in town. In both books, that man has a bad relationship in his past, shuns society, and is secretly, absurdly wealthy.
At least McCullough had the decency to change the names. Ugh. Her book is also much shorter than Blue Castle, and feels rushed. It's almost as if she realized what she was doing, and decided to end it quickly. But not before adding a wild plot device that she could use in her defence when the inevitable plagiarism charges were made: "How absurd! This is a work of my own mind! Besides, does L.M. Montgomery's book have a ghost in it? I don't think so!" Yes, she put in a ghost and it makes no sense whatsoever, because the ghost interacted with lots of characters and it's never explained what really happened.
Complaining about this book is just exhausting. Forget you ever even heard of it.
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