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The Crying Place

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The Crying Place

By: Lia Hills
Narrated by: Mark Coles Smith
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About this listen

After years of travelling, Saul is trying to settle down. But one night he receives the devastating news of the death of his oldest friend, Jed, recently returned from working in a remote Aboriginal community.

Saul's discovery in Jed's belongings of a photo of a woman convinces him that she may hold the answers to Jed's fate. So he heads out on a journey into the heart of the Australian desert to find the truth, setting in motion a powerful story about the landscapes that shape us and the ghosts that lay their claim.

The Crying Place is a haunting, luminous novel about love, country, and the varied ways in which we grieve. In its unflinching portrayal of the borderlands where worlds come together and the past and present overlap, it speaks of the places and moments that bind us. The myths that draw us in. And, ultimately, the ways in which we find our way home.

©2017 Lia Hills (P)2017 Audible, Ltd Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

"A brave and devastating novel of grief, place and belonging. I was swept up in her voice and by her storytelling skills right from the opening pages and I wasn't released back into the world until I reached the end. Even then, the novel doesn't let you go. Its grace, its compassion and its deep humanity make you see our country anew." (Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap)
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An interesting psycho-geographic story of a man pursuing answers to his best friends death. This journey is circuitous (and sometimes long-winded) taking us to the heart of memory and reconciling the past - colonisation, the erasure of first nation history and the painful inadequacy for our first people of living “two-ways”, the dispossession, the fragmentation the griefs and losses. This is a vivid depiction of some of the character and characters of the desert, an Aboriginal outstation and its people and the remaining culture. While it could use an edit (some prose is a little florid for me) this is an original story seeking to reconcile the past.

A journey to the heart of reconciliation

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Intrigued by the plot but did not keep me captivated. Found it a bit difficult to commit to.

Intriguing but not engaging

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.