The crying place

The Crying Place by Lia Hills
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My rating relates mostly to the art of writing. The subject and the story were not too much to my liking.
The Preface tells what the book is about - grief. Grief in Aboriginal culture.
Interestingly the subject of the only other book by Lia Hills - The Beginner's Guide to Living - is also grief.
Young, but no too young, man learns that his closest friend committed suicide. He is overtaken by grief and guilt - could he do something to save his friend?
Overtaken to such an extent, that instead of going for funeral, he undertakes a long journey to visit place where his friend spent last months of his life, to meet a person who apparently was important for his friend in that time.
It is a long journey, from pulsating with life Sydney to a remote desert somewhere on the border of Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia.
In quite a number of Goodreads reviews I found a complaint, that the journey is too long, nothing happens, boring.
I agree, to some extent. I also got an impression, that the author, having traveled all this long way ( and I know it from my own experience), tries to "sell" each detail of it. After some 80 pages I felt tired - been there, saw it, come to the point. But it did not discourage me from further reading - simply the book is too beautifully written to be skipped. I just changed my reading method. The book consists of over 80 short chapters. I read just few of them each day and just enough to give me inspiration to think, dream, enjoy. And I was not disappointed.
Desert - it plays a very significant role in the story. And plays it very well. Not only Australian desert, but also Sahara where the main character and his friend experienced adventurous and thought-provoking few months.
Eventually he reaches his destination - an Aboriginal settlement in the middle of nowhere and the trouble starts - for the main character and for me as a reader.
On one hand I appreciate insight into Aboriginal life, way of thinking and traditions. On the other hand I cannot find any connecting point with current day civilization. The same conclusion I reached reading Peter Carey's - A long way from home.
It is a very saddening conclusion for me.

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