Didn't work for me

Tracks

A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

by Robyn Davidson

I'm not qualified to rate this book because I didn't finish it. I'm sure it was honest, and true, and deserved to be written.  But it was too gritty for me--too unpleasant--too real.  The author is impulsive--she admits so herself--and plunges herself into her dream to lead a caravan of three camels across half of the continent of Australia. She had no experience doing anything, so far as I can tell, so she learned everything the hard way--how to handle camels, make gear, live on her own, and finance the journey. But her particular version of the "hard way" seemed to involve repeated, disastrous failures; dead, lost or abused camels; ugly encounters with ugly people; and so on. I couldn't take it anymore.

I kept expecting things to get better when she got out in the bush--over halfway through the book!--and interacted with the Aborigines.  Possibly it did, but after deciding to give up I flipped through the last half and saw nothing but unhappy interactions with rude, noisy, bigoted tourists.

I'll give her a bit of a break.  I believe the actual journey took place in the late 1970's, when people probably were as bad as she portrays.  And she herself seemed to suffer major bouts of depression during the time.  I sympathize with her issues--I applaud her persistence--but I'm giving up.