Picnic at Hanging Rock

Hanging Rock #1

by Joan Lindsay

It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred.

Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared.

They never returned.

Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Mystery, Historical Fiction, Australia, Horror, Gothic

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Joan Lindsay, Lady Lindsay was an Australian author, best known for her "ambiguous and intriguing" novel Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

ah! and there you are, my perfect little novel! it has been some time since last we've embraced. come, let us reacquaint ourselves.

but what is that you say, and so modestly? what is so perfect about you? my sweet darling, don't be so shy! you are indeed a wondrous creation.

here, let me count the ways...

1. your mystery is timeless. three schoolgirls and one schoolmistress disappear on Valentine's Day afternoon, in 1900, in australia, at the mysterious Hanging Rock. where did they go? did Nature take them, as revenge for all the injustices done against her? or perhaps she simply saw four enchanted individuals who belonged to her and not to the worldly world that they seemed to float above? upon their disappearance, a sad and tragic series of events unfolds and broadens, and so the mystery becomes larger... a pattern of sorts is created; many questions rise to the surface of a once-placid community. how do our actions impact others? how does a tragedy reverberate and affect all those connected, how does it resonate in others and bring forth emotions and thoughts and actions that they never knew could exist? the mystery at the heart of this novel is like a stone tossed in a lake: the mystery drops into the water, past the surface, not to be seen again... but the water ripples outward, concentric circles opening wider and wider, that reach so much further beyond that initial impact, that initial drop into the unknown.

2. your prose is lovely. not a single word is out of place. so artful yet never overly mannered, so charming yet never coy or affected, so dry yet never cold-blooded. you manage to be both dreamy and precise. your points are made with nuance and subtlety. you do not hammer away relentlessly but are instead content to murmur your sharp but rather ambiguous comments, all the better for your audience to contemplate them at leisure. you say more in your trim 213 pages than many novels that clock in at over twice your length.

3. your narrative... a jewel box, so compact, and full of intriguing things. and even better, it is a magic box: its interior is larger than its exterior! in just a few pages, here and there, it outlines the lives and futures of a half-dozen characters, in a way that is clear and meaningful and real and often surprisingly ironic. truth be told, your story is an often cruel one, with little or no hope for several of its characters - and yet you note these twists and turns with the lightest of touches. this light touch does not reduce the stories to anecdote, but instead allows these lives, these deaths, these tragically missed opportunities and these happy endings to evoke a fable's simplicity.

4. your characters are only briefly (but efficiently) characterized, and yet they are indelible. here is the boy who is courageous and idealistic and who lives above the world, and who rescued the wrong girl - or at least the wrong girl for him. here is the girl who loved the world around her so much that she could not leave it, and so was rescued, and who then found that the love of her life - that brave rescuer - was not for her. here is the loyal friend, rooted in the physical, rough and shy, an ideal companion for a wistful idealist, a secret and almost unrecognized hero, one who is rewarded beyond his wildest imaginings. here is the tragic sister, a rebel, an artist, an orphan, alone in the world, roughly handled emotionally and physically, yet loved and cared for - but (alas) unknowingly, a wilting flower destined for a flowerbed. and there is our awful villain, Mrs. Appleyard the Headmistress, dour and dreadful and rather grand, a monster who comes undone.

5. you leave me with that intriguing, unnerving feeling of Wanting To Know More. it is a wonderful thing, and there is so much to consider. most of all: why did those girls and their schoolmarm disappear? you throw out a bold red herring in your varied descriptions of nature being trampled underfoot by clumsy, unknowing humans. perhaps it is Nature's Revenge, you seem to suggest. upon a closer reading, you offer a far more ambiguous yet provocative interpretation, one based upon the nature of those who disappeared: they were not of this world, in spirit or in deed. with this reading, their disappearance becomes less of a tragedy and more of an epiphany... the girls and their mistress have moved beyond us all and our petty concerns; their lives were spent reaching beyond this mortal coil, and so... perhaps they have escaped it, and entered a new realm, a higher plane.

but, in the end, i do not believe the mystery itself is the point of your story. i think that the tale of Picnic at Hanging Rock is less about what has happened and more about what does it all mean... is there a greater implication, a pattern even, to all of our little actions and to all of our little lives, one that exists beyond us, one that connects us to each other and to a world beyond?

here, in your own lovely words, is where i found the true purpose behind your strange, thoughtful tale:

"Peering down between the boulders Irma could see the glint of water and tiny figures coming and going through drifts of rosy smoke, or mist. 'Whatever can those people be doing down there like a lot of ants?' Marion looked out over her shoulder. 'A surprising number of human beings are without purpose. Although it's probable, of course, that they are performing some necessary function unknown to themselves.' Irma was in no mood for one of Marion's lectures. The ants and their business were dismissed without further comment. Although Irma was aware, for a little while, of a rather curious sound coming up from the plain. Like the beating of far-off drums."

oh, the glorious mystery of it all! but, a person may ask, what does it all truly mean? what is the exact point, how does this all add up, what specific message are we supposed to glean? well never fear, you charming perfect book... i am not one to kiss and tell! your secrets shall remain safe with me.

[Debra · Rating 2 out of 5]

On a summer's day in 1900 the students at Appleyard College for Young Ladies decided to go on a picnic at Hanging Rock. Not everyone returned to the college.

I was definitely not drinking the Kool Aid on this one. I am perhaps in the minority here, but I found this book to be B-O-R-I-N-G. The girls go missing early on and the story just dragged. Were there metaphysical events going on? Did they get sucked into the rock? Was there a criminal element? What happened? Also, what about the good characters being good looking and fit and the bad characters being overweight and ugly? It has happened before in literature, but it is offensive to a degree. Sad to see this was written by a woman. Also, did I say I was bored? The girls went missing early on and things just went on and on and on like the EverReady bunny. I kept thinking it was going to get better. Hoping it would be something like “The Ruins” but sadly, it didn’t. I don’t mind that the Author never told us what happened to the girls. That is one thing that I liked. But there seemed to be a lot of other things going on in the book that dulled down the story.I think it is safe to say that this was not the book for me. It is very rare for me to give a rating lower than a 3 but I just had difficulty getting into this book. I finished it because I wanted to complete a challenge but overall - I just wasn't interested. I know I am in the minority on this one, most have given it much higher reviews but it was a struggle for me.

See more of my reviews at www.openbookpost.com

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picnic at Hanging Rock was made into a wonderful film that I saw around the time it came out. I didn't realize until a few days ago that this was first a marvelous book. I just finished it and now I want to watch the movie again. I remember that Peter Weir, the director, created an ephemeral, lovely look to the settings and atmosphere that suited the story very well. Set in 1900 at a girls' school in Melbourne, Australia, the tale begins with a picnic at a huge outcropping of stone called the Hanging Rock. Three school friends and a teacher go exploring up the rock and are lost.

If you crave resolution, you won't get it here. I read a little bit about the author, Joan Lindsay, and she wanted to create a mysterious, unsolvable puzzle, akin to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. She succeeds. This is eerie and otherworldly, and reminds the reader that Australia is a wild place that existed long before Europeans came to put their stamp on it. The girls who disappeared were special: lovely, kind, and smart. It makes it worse somehow. Later, spirals of disaster are set off by the main tragedy to carry others to their fate, some good and some ill, but none can ever forget what happened.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is a book about mystery: not just the plot enigma of what happened to the girls and their governess who vanished at Hanging Rock but, more broadly, about how not everything in life can be rationally and logically explained by human thought. Indeed, the text goes out of its way at various points to foreground the limitations of human viewpoints: seeing a landscape as empty when it is teeming with animal, insect and plant life, for instance; or having characters ponder whether it's true or a myth that the moon might influence behaviour.

This also makes subtle but pointed comments about gender (the removal of the girls' gloves and shoes is also a way of unshackling themselves from oppressive Victorian feminine conventions); about class ('Money is power. Money is strength and safety') and about Australia as a colonialist state - the unnamed 'black man' or 'abo' who is barely mentioned as having been brought in to help the search. The text is obsessed with time and time-keeping, an organisational structure that is superimposed on nature; and also with dreams ('Mine are so real sometimes I can't even be sure they are dreams') - an allusion to Aboriginal 'dream-time' and ideas of time that are more elastic so that past, present and future are indistinguishable? There are also striking symbols such as the association between Miranda and white swans in Mike's head

Lindsay's prose style is as inscrutable as her story: so much is left unknown and beautifully indefinite, and she resists the pull of explanation. I love this open-endedness and lack of closure, a sort of gesture towards a philosophy of unpredictability, but can see why some readers have found this frustrating and unsatisfying. For me, the allusive unspokeness of much of the story worked perfectly.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australia is a harsh, unforgiving land where the seasons are inverted from what is usually experienced by the world at large, the flora and fauna belong to an evolutionary niche not seen elsewhere and the original settlers are the descendants of deported convicts. Yet over this, an English-ness has been imposed: the carefully cultivated gardens, the finely turned out ladies and gentlemen, the afternoon teas and the elevenses. This contrast often gives rise to a tension between man and nature which has been explored by countless writers and filmmakers. This novel by Joan Lindsay is an outstanding example of one such exploration.



Hanging Rock is a natural volcanic rock formation in Australia near Melbourne. As the story starts, a group of young girls, boarders at Mrs. Appleyard's College for Young Ladies, is excitedly starting for their annual picnic near it, on February 14, St. Valentine's Day. There is Miranda, beautiful like a Botticelli painting; Irma Leopold, the pretty heiress; Marion Quade, top academic performer; Edith Horton, the college dunce and many others. They are chaperoned by the young and impressionable Mademoiselle Dianne de Poitiers, the French mistress and the mathematics mistress Greta McCraw who lives virtually in a world of equations. They are driven to the spot by Ben Hussey, the owner of the town's livery stables, in his trap. The only student left behind is Sara Waybourne, the youngest boarder as a punishment for not learning The Wreck of the Hesperus by heart.

The picnic goes well until teatime, when Miranda, Irma and Marion decide to go closer to the Hanging Rock to properly examine it. Edith tags along. They are seen by the young Hon. Michael Fitzhubert, visiting from England with his uncle and his coachman Albert Crundall. Fitzhubert, captivated by Miranda's beauty, follows them for a bit then turns back. That is the last anyone sees of them, however - because all except Edith, who rushes back in an attack of hysteria, disappear without a trace; as does the mathematics mistress. The mystery is never solved.

The novel is the chronicle of the fallout from this event - how the lives of all the people connected with it, even the minor characters, are inextricably changed.



-------------------------------

At the outset, the author writes:

Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year 1900, and all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important.

This is the tone set right at the beginning - that of the "true story" - with quotes from letters and reports peppered throughout the narrative, and even footnotes in some places. In many places the writing becomes reportage; in others, it reads like an inexpert author trying to fictionalise historical characters and events. It is only when we realise that none of this happened that we come to appreciate what Joan Lindsay is trying to do - and we acknowledge her mastery of the medium.

If whether something really happened "seems hardly important", what does it say about the nature of the "story"? Is truth important here, or is there a truth beyond the phenomenal world which we consider rock solid?

As the story progresses, people's behaviour becomes increasingly eccentric. The college, a solid bastion of English respectability in the middle of wild Australia, slowly unravels - as does the redoubtable headmistress Appleyard. The tension between her and the orphan Sara (whom she subjects to mental torture mercilessly) is like a taut elastic band which is stretched and stretched until it breaks - with disastrous results. It is also to be noted that Sara idolises Miranda, who is almost a myth, an ethereal vision which fittingly disappears.

But the real protagonist of the story is Hanging Rock, the volcanic formation which is millions and millions of years old, standing ominously tall above all the puny humans crawling around like ants at its base - ephemeral beings whose unimaginably tiny lifetimes it must have surely smiled at, mockingly.

...The plain below was just visible; infinitely vague and distant. Peering down between the boulders Irma could see the glint of water and tiny figures coming and going through drifts of rosy smoke, or mist. 'Whatever can those people be doing down there like a lot of ants?'

Marion looked out over her shoulder. 'A surprising number of human beings are without purpose. Although it's probable, of course, that they are performing some necessary function unknown to themselves.'

The elemental power of the Australian landscape here is what is drawing the girls out of their so very English cocoons. Throughout the narrative, this rough land calls out to us in a thousand tongues: through the hissing of snakes, the chirping of birds, the scurrying of lizards, the wind through the trees - and through the silent and impressive presence of Hanging Rock. It finally succeeds in drawing even the stolid Mrs. Appleyard out.

And now, at last, after a lifetime of linoleum and asphalt and Axminster carpets, the heavy flat-footed woman trod the springing earth. Born fifty-seven years ago in a suburban wilderness of smoke-grimed bricks, she knew no more of nature than a scarecrow rigid on a broomstick above a field of waving corn. She who had lived so close to the little forest on the Bendigo Road had never felt the short wiry grass underfoot. Never walked between the straight shaggy stems of the stingybark trees. Never paused to savour the jubilant gustsof spring that carried the scent of wattle and eucalypt right into the front hall of the college. Nor sniffed with foreboding the blast of the north wind, laden in summer with the fine ash of mountain fires...

Nature, in all her raw and pristine glory - nature, come to extract her price from civilisation.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first review I wrote got "eaten" by the web, so here is take two.

This was a brilliantly written piece of psychological horror by an Australian writer. While reading this, I kept thinking about "The House of Leaves". I got the same eerie feelings I had while reading that story. The eeriness started to happen during the schoolgirls approach to the picnic grounds near the rock.

I was glad I got the chance to read this story. I had been wanting a copy for years. And as soon as I heard that Penguin re-printed it in the States I rushed out and bought a copy.

If I ever get a chance to visit Australia, I would love to see the formation in person.

Also, try and read this book in one sitting.

[Maryana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picnic at Hanging Rock must be my favourite read of this year so far. Explaining why I loved this novel so much feels like an impossible mission, for it has consumed me entirely.

Lost in the landscape

A few girls and their teacher from a new but already prestigious boarding school go missing during their lazy and luxurious summer picnic on the day of Saint Valentine in a known unknown land of Australia in the year 1990. The highlight of their picnic is to visit a famous landmark called Hanging Rock -this rock formation looms large and juts into the sky, so when confronted by such monumental configurations of nature, the human eye is woefully inadequate. In the textbooks, it is described as a “geographical anomaly”. While many say Australian history is new, the mysterious rock must be millions or billions of years old. It is as beautiful as it is sinister. And it doesn’t care about all these human adjectives.

Out at the Hanging Rock the long violet shadows were tracing their million-year-old pattern of summer evenings across its secret face.

From the beginning, there is a feeling that something supernatural is at play. Yet, this idea is very light touch, there is an eerie or dreamlike quality to the tone of this novel. The narrative follows the ramifications of the tragedy among the school, the teachers, and the people who have witnessed the disappearance. The story of the missing girls is recounted rather than spun, presenting different points of view and perspectives of the events. There are some strange hints dropped here and there by the narrator or the characters, but they are never fully explained.


Victorian postcard

As always, in matters of surpassing human interest, those who knew nothing whatever either at first or even second hand were the most emphatic in expressing their opinions; which are well known to have a way of turning into established facts overnight.

Unseen, unrecorded, the pattern of the picnic continued to darken and spread.

The characters are not quite there. Even those who remain are irrevocably drawn to Hanging Rock, their minds insatiable to solve its mystery, to know what happened. The way we perceive characters is influenced by the information shared by other characters. The Botticelli angel - our Darling Miranda - is a golden girl of the boarding school. She is beautiful, sweet and kind, loved by everyone. Yet we never get to love her, we are told to love her.


Visuals: Details from Sandro Botticelli’s paintings

Trying to measure the immeasurable

Time plays a vital role throughout Picnic at Hanging Rock. For many characters, time stops at the rock. Indeed, there is a scene where the characters’ watches stop. But also in a figurative sense, the world of the picnic becomes non-linear. The mechanised clock-like understanding of the world set by civilisation is replaced by the land’s eternal time.

Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.

At Hanging Rock. While Hanging Rock is a setting or a place, in a way, it also becomes a character and a measure or anti-measure of time.

There is no single instant on this spinning globe that is not, for millions of individuals, immeasurable by ordinary standards of time: a fragment of eternity forever unrelated to the calendar of the striking clock.

Sinister innocence

There is a subtle yet powerful clash of opposites throughout this novel - a conflict between order vs chaos, nature vs humans, civilisation vs wilderness, educated vs uneducated, and manners vs vulgarity.

Picnic at Hanging Rock can be read on multiple levels, and by reading between the lines, it is possible to come across a metaphorical representation of the undoing of colonial Australia. It is a slow burn of rigid British ideals whose order is ultimately shattered into chaos - the truth is unveiled. Moreover, all the characters in this novel are confined within certain racial, social and gender restrictions. For instance, there are many descriptions of what the boarding school girls wear and how uncomfortable their clothes are, so that the reader feels the discomfort they feel.

Insulated from natural contacts with earth, air and sunlight, by corsets pressing on the solar plexus, by voluminous petticoats, cotton stockings and kid boots, the drowsy well-fed girls lounging in the shade were no more a part of their environment than figures in a photograph album, arbitrarily posed against a backcloth of cork rocks and cardboard trees.

There are some tenuous descriptions of repressed sexuality and even possible queerness, creating a sense of repressed feelings boiling under the surface, which never quite come out as they are securely confined within those strict Victorian-like restrictions.



While countless writers wrote about the tension between humanity and nature, Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay is an outstanding example of one such exploration. Lindsay’s writing is so rich and multilayered. There are vivid descriptions of flora, fauna and sensations like the summer heat, hints of dark humour, cosmical musings on the immensity of nature and human fragility. I’m not sure it makes sense to categorise this novel and some shelves here on Goodreads like “Horror”, “True Crime”, and “Thriller” feel very misleading. It is also true that I might be too prejudiced against the definition of genres, so forgive me. Picnic at Hanging Rock is quite sui generis, some works with a similar feeling would be Tarjei Vesaas’s The Ice Palace, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Iris Murdoch’s The Bell. I’ve also noticed many readers feel disappointed or offended by the lack of resolution and closure. For me, Picnic at Hanging Rock feels perfect because of its ambiguity and truly peculiar sense of presence of absence. What a fascinating novel! Is it even real, or have I dreamed it up?

[Colin Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Weir’s movie and that haunting theme music have stayed with me since the 1970s. I finally got to read what inspired this triumph in Australian cinematography. I stumbled upon a worn copy, a treasure from one of those delightful roadside libraries.

This novel was all I expected, and wanted. I was tantalised by the mystery, atmosphere and loose ends.

As a throwaway to her list of characters, Joan Lindsay wrote:
Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important.

Oh, what a brilliant tease!

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve written before in some of my reviews about how much I hate books where an author teases us with a mystery (usually a disappearance or a murder) but then never gives us a satisfying solution because “that’s not how REAL LIFE works” or some such nonsense. God, the fucking arrogance of this stance. Yeah, I know that most murders are never solved in real life and that reality doesn’t get tied up in neat little bows, but you’re not doing anything revolutionary by drawing readers in with a mystery and then refusing to solve it. That’s why we read FICTION, you pretentious ass.

Anyway, this is all a long-winded way to say that the main reason I put off reading Picnic at Hanging Rock for so long was because I was pretty sure it was going to be that kind of book, and by the end I’d have more questions than answers. In short – is Picnic at Hanging Rock a satisfying mystery, or does it end with an open-ended question?

Yes, and yes.

The story takes place at Miss Appleyard’s College for Young Ladies in Australia, in the year 1900. The book begins on the day of the annual picnic at Hanging Rock, a mountain near the school. During the excursion, three senior girls go off to explore by themselves, and disappear. The book follows the increasingly desperate efforts of the school headmistress to do damage control as the days extend into months, and (in the fine tradition of stories like this) secrets and lies come to light in the wake of the tragedy. Written as if it were a nonfiction recounting of true events, the book includes excerpts of newspaper articles and interviews with witnesses discussing the disappearance and the ripple effect it had on the school and the community.

Joan Lindsay does something pretty extraordinary in this book, where she hints at information rather than stating it outright, and trusts in the reader to make connections and see the subtext in conversations and events. Picnic at Hanging Rock will not answer all of your questions, but the story is told in such a way that by the end, you no longer feel like you need to know every last thing. That was my experience, anyway, and bear in mind that I’m the kind of person who usually demands thorough and satisfying conclusions in my fiction.

Maybe I’m less salty about the ambiguous ending than I’d normally be, because the edition I read includes a discussion of the final chapter that Lindsay's editors cut from the book, where we get an explanation for the disappearance. And knowing what the author intended for the ending of her book, I can say authoritatively that we did not need that last chapter, and her editors were right to cut it.

Picnic at Hanging Rock managed to do something I didn’t think was possible: it made me appreciate ambiguous storytelling, and gave me an ending that was actually satisfying, despite its open ending.

[Jo (The Book Geek) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I'll admit, that I'm sitting here, rather perplexed, as to why this book is considered a classic. The book began well, it kept my attention and I was intrigued to learn what supposedly happened at this hanging rock. As the book continued, my yawns grew wider and longer, and really, I can definitely compare this book, to a homemade Yorkshire pudding, that failed to rise.

There seemed to be many questions asked in this story, but very few answers were given. The story kind of went off track, and started exploring relationships with characters, that I feel, had no real role in the story, especially not if one wants to find out what happened at hanging rock.
As I dragged myself painfully to the end of this book, I realised I didn't really care what any of the answers to the questions were. I was hoping to love this book, but it was just a tedious disappointment.

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe 4.5. This was such a strange book, but I think I loved it.

[Jan-Maat]

"And now, at last, after a lifetime of linoleum and asphalt and Axminister carpets, the heavy flat footed woman trod the springing earth...She who had lived so close to the little forest on the Bendigo Road had never felt the short wiry grass underfoot. Never walked between the straight shaggy stems of the stingy-bark trees. Never paused to savour the jubilant gusts of Spring that carried the scent of wattle and eucalypt right into the front hall of the College. Nor sniffed with foreboding the blast of the North wind, laden in summer with the fine ash of mountain fires..." (p.193)

At school in French classes we were taught the phrase je t'embrasse tres fort and told it was the kind thing that a grandmother might use to close a letter to a grandchild. Which in retrospect was odd because although in class we were then around the age of fifteen, I don't think that any of us were grandmothers at the time. Through perhaps learning such a phrase was useful in the event of either acquiring through the patterns of fate a French grandmother or indeed in fifteen years or so time a French grandchild. However in any case my recommendation for this novel is no less strong than a French grandmother's embrace.

Although I had best qualify that by admitting I first watched the TV series (2018) and then the film (1975). For me this was like reading with the knowledge of two other complimentary yet divergent readings and this allowed me the pure pleasure of being able to pick up the book and read any page just for its prose, of course if you are a reader who needs not to know what is going to happen next in a story then I don't recommend my course of action to you. In this regard we all have to know ourselves.

The film picks up on some of the novel's symbolism particularly that of the swan - which puzzled me while watching since I remembered that the swan was the symbol of Jan Hus later adopted by Martin Luther and so I confused myself, however the film I felt reduced the age of the school girls and in retrospect is pretty obscure if you haven't read the book. The TV series goes with a queer reading of the book, I hesitate to say that the book has a queer subtext, it could just about be considered accidental equally it might be blatantly queer but plausibly deniable, rather like the presence of Australia in the book as a whole. Less the elephant in the room, than the air we breathe. Invisible but essential.

Anyway I loved this novel, I would put it alongside I Heard the Owl Call My Name And near to the novels of Penelope Fitzgerald and Anita Brookner, in that it is dense, the reader has to work, piecing information together, to reach conclusions, to understand what is happening, when it is funny it tends to be blackly so or at least charcoal grey. I feel that this novel isn't that far from J.M. Coetzee either, in that there is a lot that is not explicitly said, & and they both offer us colonial novels - we are conscious of the characters as an alien layer (s) on top of a landscape that has stories of its own.

Ok. Enough. On St .Valentine's day, 1900 the girls of the private Applegate Academy accompanied by two teachers go for a picnic at the nearby Hanging Rock. The Academy is close enough to Melbourne for a journalist to pedal there and back on a bicycle with flat tires in one day, but still at this period relatively undeveloped countryside, there's a train station, a couple of small settlements, a handful of villas, and countryside. We are in a liminal zone, there is just enough civilisation for a person to ignore the wild. But anyway we're going on a picnic. The food is disgusting in this book - I didn't feel as sick as when I read the descriptions of Australian dining in a town like alice, but still it felt heavy in my stomach, climate inappropriate British cuisine. The ants, however, steal such abandoned lumps of rich sugar icing as they can find. We're on this picnic. Full of chicken pie, sleepy. Some of the party go for a walk and don't come back.

Newspapers call this 'the mystery at hanging rock'. Note however that this is not the title of the book. There are a number of solutions to the disappearance; firstly the one described in the mysterious missing chapter, a chapter which is available in the Penguin edition but not on this vintage (an imprint of penguin) edition ah first and second class publishing !, there are a couple of passages in the book which support that ending. Secondly there is the rational accident explanation - the rocks are a dangerous place after all, and there are some scraps of evidence to support such a reading and thirdly there is the criminal reading which is suggested by a senior police Detective in Melbourne: It appeared that they might yet be found in a Sydney brothel: such things happened now and then in Sydney when girls of respectable background disappeared without a trace. Not often in Melbourne. Mrs Appleyard could only shudder. (p.102) I am amused that this is in Melbourne a known Sydney phenomena, bad things always tend to happen over there, not here. In Sydney the Detectives probably tell a different story.

For me the disappearance is not the heart of the novel or the point, it's just an excuse to slowly expose the sense that you from the first few pages that everything is off. That nothing is as it seems. That we are presented with a Victorian work of carefully curated appearances that sits on top of reality. Really this is all quite contemporary. This book shows us an instagram world, a Facebook Universe. As we read though first we sense that it is dense, then we find hints and clues until we can claw past the corset, the union Jack, and to see the the layers of fraud self deception and self knowledge. It's quite an adventure. What we see are the results of those disappearances, or possible of St.Valentine's Day, one community falls apart, but other smaller ones, partnerships to start with, are established.

This book out me in mind also of the Percival story - you know the person in a quest who meets the right people but asks the wrong questions, and also of the leopard because this a narrative also with currents flowing in different directions under the still surface of the water, and that flickers back and forwards in time.

The novel has a mysterious silence or absence. To go back to the swans, the swans seem to be the European variety not the black, mute, Australian type, so a symbol in the novel of grace and natural purity can also be seen as a symbol of colonialism and the increasing impurity of nature. If Lindsay intended that I don't know, though she was very interested in Spiritualism, and there is throughout a sense of "The taut gossamer veil" (p. 138) dividing the world of appearances from an unseen reality.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is the atmosphere, the pervasive sense of dread and the wonderful descriptions that made this book for me, a special read. The school, the headmistress, the students all with hidden undercurrents of eeriness. What happened to those girls? An open ended ending, up to the reader's interpretation. Have never seen the movie but want to see it after reading the book. Wonder how closely adapted the movie is to the book? Very well done and mysterious read.

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Well, young ladies, we are indeed fortunate in the weather for our picnic to Hanging Rock. I have instructed Mademoiselle that as the day is likely to be warm, you may remove your gloves after the drag has passed through Woodend. You will partake of luncheon at the Picnic Grounds near the Rock. Once again let me remind you that the Rock itself is extremely dangerous and you are therefore forbidden to engage in any tomboy foolishness in the matter of exploration, even on the lower slopes. It is, however, a geological marvel on which you will be required to write a brief essay on Monday morning. I also wish to remind you that the vicinity is renowned for its venomous snakes and poisonous ants of various species.'

In 1900, a pleasant outing for a local girls' school turns tragic when three of the participants never return from the trip.

'. . . even the lowest and most accessible levels of the Rock are exceedingly treacherous, especially for girls in long summer dresses . . .'

This set up is great; what a terrific sense of dread and foreboding.

'A knowledge of arithmetic don't help much in the Bush.'

I'm rubbing my hands together with glee, thinking of how great it's going to be when the shit hits the fan, and then . . . fizzle.

The girls are missed by their friends, a would-be rescuer pines over the exquisite beauty of one of the missing girls, and the school's owner frets about declining enrollment for the coming semester. Of course, this isn't America - there's no talk of lawsuits - but I expected more of a fuss. There are just too many characters with too many backstories, which only served to dilute any possible drama or suspense.

The delicious anticipation of the trip to the Rock was much more interesting than anything that happened later.

This was a damned good line, though:

'Nobody,' said the old man, 'can be held responsible for the pranks of destiny.'

[Emily May · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't fall in love with this, but it was a quick, decent read. I liked the setting and, though it was written in the 1960s, I felt Lindsay did a great job of capturing an early 1900s feel. The characters and their mannerisms felt similar to E.M. Forster or Edith Wharton.

It begins with the titular picnic-- Valentine's Day 1900, which in Australia means a lovely summer day, when the girls of Appleyard College for Young Ladies go for a relaxing picnic at Hanging Rock. By the time they are ready to head back to school in the afternoon, three of the girls and one school mistress have gone missing. Yet another girl, Edith, who also left with the missing girls, is found panicked and confused, with no memory of what has happened to her companions.

The story is about the way this mystery affects the school, its headmistress, and the local community. The mystery of the missing girls has far-reaching consequences and touches many different people's lives, with one tragedy after another striking those surrounding it.

I think the main thing preventing me from loving this was that the characters were forgettable. This prevented me from truly becoming immersed in the story and mystery, even while the setting was vivid and the mystery itself intriguing. Wondering what happened to these girls kept me turning pages, though. Was it murder? Was a teacher involved? Did they die from exposure or starvation? Could it have been supernatural? Guess we'll always wonder.

[Maddie Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

RATING BREAKDOWN
Characters: 3⭐️
Setting: 4⭐️
Plot: 4⭐️
Themes: 4⭐️
Emotional Impact: 3⭐️
Personal Enjoyment: 4⭐️
Total Rounded Average: 3.75⭐️

This is a pretty digestible/bingeable little classic as it's short and gripping. I found the characters to be more plot device than focus, but that worked. The setting and plot are the pull. I loved the remote area of Australia at the turn of the century, and the missing women kept me turning pages.

The themes of the story seem to center on reputation, manipulation, and class—it was all quite subtle and delicate, and that added to the sinister "something's not right but I can't put my finger on it" vibe. With no clear villains, it still manages to feel unsettling and sinister.

It didn't have a big emotional impact, but I enjoyed it all the way through and am likely to remember it. I would recommend this to readers who don't pick up a lot of classics but would like to try one out. It's pretty accessible and interesting.

[Suz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Australian classic which I probably wouldn't have picked up other than I was short of an audio cd for the car. The added bonus to these Abc Australia productions, is the pan flute music that is borrowed from the movie version. It is pretty music that adds to the flavour of the time of the year 1900. The narrator was outstanding, Australian actress Jacqueline Mackenzie portrayed the Aussie flavour perfectly, her male voices were entertaining and real.

The story of a group of girls never to be seen again, for me, lacked finality, but that what the story was all about. I noticed that just like The Harp in the South, this was another short classic.

Historical fiction and I just don't gel, but I did like it enough.

[Repellent Boy · Rating 1 out of 5]

1,5. Se viene una opinión super impopular, pero allá vamos jajaja. Durante los últimos años han llegado a mí constantemente maravillosas críticas y opiniones sobre esta obra de Joan Lindsay y mis ganas de leerla iban cada vez a más. La decepción ha sido tal que la considero la peor lectura que he hecho este año.

Estamos en 1900 y nos encontramos ante un grupo de jóvenes pertenecientes a un pijo colegio para "señoritas" llamado Appleyard. Un caluroso domingo, la horrible directora permitirá a las niñas, junto a dos profesoras, trasladarse hasta el Hanging Rock para realizar un picnic en plena naturaleza. Pero las cosas no saldrán bien, ya que una profesora y tres jóvenes no regresarán.

La premisa de la historia me parece interesantísima y tanto si la historia hubiera girado todo el tiempo al misterio de Hanging Rock, como si hubiera servido de excusa para hablarnos de otras cosas y personajes en profundidad, me hubiera parecido bien. Pero ni una cosa ni la otra. El misterio siempre está ahí, pero realmente no se indaga. Simplemente la trama va saltando de un personaje a otro sin ninguna continuidad y sin permitirnos digerir nada de lo que nos cuenta.

Los personajes no tienen ningún tipo de profundidad, no estamos ni cuatro páginas con uno cuando salta al siguiente. Y así, durante toda la novela. La joven Sara, probablemente el personaje más interesante de la novela, sale más por lo que hablan de ella otros personajes, que por ella misma. Realmente ningún personaje parece necesario para la historia. Hay historias que destacan más por su ambientación que por sus personajes, pero tampoco creo que esta obra sea redonda en ello. Veo el intento, pero no lo compro.

La forma de contar la historia se me ha hecho aburrida, cansina y repetitiva. Parece que no sucede nada, y no solo a causa de que tienes la sensación de que pasan pocas cosas, sino que las pocas que ocurren son narradas rápidamente y sin interés. De hecho, hay cierta parte de la novela donde parece que va a estallar un enfrentamiento y con ello le va a dar algo de vidilla a la narración, pero no, es entonces cuando la autora escribe textualmente "Resulta innecesario elaborar un detallado informe de la entrevista que tuvo lugar". Cuando sentía que algo de lo que pasaba se iba a mostrar con algo de intensidad, nueva decepción. Me dieron ganas de tirar el libro.

No pensaba ni por asomo que de esta novela acabaría teniendo una opinión tan hater, pero bueno, no todos los libros son para todo el mundo. Tengo la sensación de que si sabiendo el inicio, me hubieran contado el final, habría jurado que sería una novela que me encantaría. Sin embargo, el desarrollo ha sido tan pésimo y ha tenido tan poca sustancia, que se ha convertido en uno de los libros que más me ha costado terminar.

[Barbara K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in the mists of time (1975, to be exact) Peter Weir made a remarkable movie based on this book. The mystical quality of the movie was tied into the Australian environment, and the sense of it has stayed with me since then. (Note: Apparently there has also been a TV mini-series taken from the book; I know nothing about that.)

I finally made time to read the book this week. It’s clearly not much loved by GR reviewers, but it was 5 stars for me - and for those who consider it one of the great Australian novels.

The bare bones of the story: On an outing from their rural Australian boarding school to a location known as Hanging Rock, 3 teenage girls and a teacher disappear while climbing the rocks. One girl is eventually found. The event ripples through the school and the local community.

The magic of the book lies in the way that Joan Lindsay presents the inherent conflict between the untamed, and unknowable, nature of the outback and the overly civilized British transplants who choose to interact with it. Her arch descriptions of the faculty and students at the school and the other British enclaves in the first part of the book are vaguely reminiscent of Jane Austen. And then comes the trip to Hanging Rock. The farther the girls walk from the picnic area, the more the influence of nature dominates in enigmatic ways, and the tone of the writing changes.

The disappearance of the three women (the teacher’s disappearance is concurrent in time with the girls’, though disconnected in other ways) has an effect, to a greater or lesser extent, on virtually everyone in the community. Some key individuals act in ways that are inconsistent with the personalities they demonstrated earlier, while the actions of others seem to enhance their pre-existing dispositions. Still others are affected only tangentially, but with long term consequences.

Most of the locations in the book are real, but the events are not (despite the hints to the contrary in the text). By the way, the narration is well-matched to the story.


Hanging Rock

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

In past years I focused on memoirs during women’s history month. This year I pivoted to read more classics so I could see how women’s writing has changed over time. Since being on Goodreads for many years, a classic that keeps popping up from time to time is Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Lindsay was an intriguing character. Born in Victorian Australia when people clung to old British mores, Lindsay did not publish her first novel until 1967. The world had seen two world wars and entered a modern age yet Lindsay chose to write about an event that happened in her youth. Readers of modern classics have placed Picnic at Hanging Rock in categories from mystery, thriller, gothic, historical fiction, and everything in between. Not wanting my reading to focus only on American writers, I pivoted to Lindsay’s novel that she wrote later in her life. As she noted, the events in this novel may or may not have taken place. She left it to her readers to discover whether Picnic at Hanging Rock was a true story or not.

Mrs Appleyard, a crochety old lady, runs a boarding high school for girls in the Australian Outback. She outfitted her school with the best staff and attempted to only accept the cream of society. She favored those students who appeared pretty and denounced those who were pudgy, short, or came from families of poor means. In 1900 girls were lucky to attend high school and finishing school and then got married. Any education they received was an added bonus. It happened that a few of the students showed aptitude in math or literature, but Mrs Appleyard could care less provided that their well to do families could pay full fees to the school plus an added donated. Thus, the bane of her existence is an orphaned girl named Sara Weybourne. Nothing Sara does Can please Mrs Appleyard, who acts like a witch around the girl. She is constantly reprimanded for not learning lines ot not having funds or having old, tattered clothes. In every class, there is another reason to denounce the girl, lowering her self esteem to the point of depression. Sara writes poetry and shows promise as an artist, but all Mrs Appleyard cares about is collecting fees. It is in this regard that Sara is forbidden to go on a school outing to Hanging Rock on Valentines Day, 1900, which is supposed to be the highlight of the school’s year.

Why Hanging Rock in Australia’s summer? For this we will never know Mrs Appleyard’s whims.The edition I read includes a cover portrait entitled Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1874, thar now hangs in a Melbourne art museum. The scenery appeared lovely but not in the heat of summer when girls were expected to conform to Victorian fashions. Four girls, three the belles of the oldest class, decide to take a hike to the rock. Upon crossing a three of the girls disappear, leading me to joke that there must have been a crack in the space-time continuum. How else can three girls simply vanish? A fourth girl who tagged along runs back to the picnickers in horror to notify the chaperones, and the math mistress goes to look for them. Of course, she disappears as well. How could four people simply vanish without a trace? This is the mystery that Lindsay wants her readers to answer, but she leaves behind no clues. I’ve read plenty of mysteries and even Dame Agatha Christie left clues while omitting one key to discover whodunit. That is perhaps why Lindsay notes that these events may or may not have happened, and I dubbed the whole case a crack in the space- time continuum. Readers shall never know what took place.

One aspect of the novel that provides comic relief is countering the girls with Michael Fitzhubert who has just completed Oxford and moved temporarily to Australia to his aunt and uncle’s estate. Michael happened to have been out riding on the day of the disappearance and feels responsible for the girls’ plight. Although his relations run a tight ship, he is determined to go back to Hanging Rock to look for them. Miraculously, one girl named Irma appears out of nowhere. She is the richest student at Mrs Appleyard’s college, and in her condition she would not return. Of course, in her convalescence, the well meaning aunt and uncle attempt to foster a romance that isn’t there. All Michael wants to do is enjoy life before entering into his expected role in the upper crust of society. He is interested in traveling Australia, maybe visiting Queensland and other areas on the coast. Melbourne and his aunt and uncle’s summer estate represent the crux of upper crust life, and for this he is not interested in at the moment. This subplot occurs while Appleyard College unravels as parents threaten to pull out their daughters following the Easter holidays. Mrs Appleyard turns to drinking, and one could see how J K Rowling took elements of boarding school culture while crafting her epic tale. Parents pulling their children out of school due to unforeseen circumstances is the one aspect of this novel besides Michael Fitzhubert’s character that appeared light hearted for me.

In the end the disappearances at Hanging Rock remain an unsolved mystery. Lindsay chose to leave her readers hanging (ha) and never revealed what happened on Valentine’s Day 1900. Peter Weir bought the rights to the book for a movie version and did solve the mystery at the end. Lindsay actually wrote an additional chapter that solved the mystery, but her editors chose to leave it out at the end. For those wanting to know whodunit or what happened, they will have to deduce it for themselves or watch the movie. Picnic at Hanging Rock became hard for me to rate at the end. Yes, the premise of the story is Victorian gothic and the characters were so representative of the time that I could poke fun at them. Scary, hardly. I have a runaway imagination but was not scared because the introduction noted the backstory and that the mystery did not get solved. I wish that Lindsay would have fought the editors and insisted on the inclusion of that last chapter. Sadly, it is not there and I will forever think thar the missing people got sucked into a crack in the space- time continuum.

3.5 stars

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't generally care for open ended mysteries. I think if an author sets out to write a mystery he owes an explanation to his/her readers. But I think this was better because we never know certain things about how the girls disappeared and what became of them. It's more the story of the boarding school and the strange headmistress, with eerie undercurrents of sexual repression. Very well written, and the author hints that it may be based on a true story, but there are no facts to bear that out. In any case, I very much enjoyed it and it satisfied my love of odd little books.

[path · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was more than I anticipated. The event that launched the story was the disappearance of three young women from Appleyard College along with a governess. The circumstances of the disappearance are eerie and hint of the supernatural, as mysterious disappearances do, but the details of the disappearance and the subsequent search are not really the focus of the book. The disappearance is what the book is “about,” but more incidental to the story in the way that, say, ripples in a pond are “about” the stone someone dropped in the water.

The main focus of the book is on the ripples emanating from the disappearance, as those ripples move through and then out and away from people adjacent to the event. Initially there is involvement by the police and their interviews with the other students, the livery driver, other picnic goers, and the one student who left with the women but returned, mysteriously dazed. The ripples eventually reach others, causing great psychological distress, particularly for Mrs. Appleyard, Michael Fitzhubert, and Sara Waybourne who all have compelling narrative lines.

Lindsay’s writing struck me as alike in tone and mood to Shirley Jackson, and I think I liked this novel for the same reasons I tend to like her writing. There is an element of the gothic in it, but unlike what I have read from Jackson, this story is grounded in a fabricated but realistic missing persons case with evidence, police interviews, and news reports. But behind the events, the book seems to be about time and memory and their destructive potential.

In fact, when you start to look, clocks and time are everywhere in this book. Lindsay even wrote an autobiographical novel called Time Without Clocks, which strongly suggests that they meant something to her. The events of this book begin with two clocks (the carriage driver’s and a governess’s) that have both mysteriously stopped a 12:00 pm on the day of the disappearance. The disappearance, then, takes place in that subjective, narrative space of halted time, and there it remains, like the images of those young women forever frozen in memory, the last fleeting image of a white sleeve disappearing into the brush.

The image of these young women (less so the governess, sadly) are halted as well, psychologically, permanently in the minds of people like Sara, Mrs. Appleyard, and Michael, not to be dislodged. Lindsay observes that …

“There is no single instant on this spinning globe that is not, for millions of individuals, immeasurable by ordinary standards of time: a fragment of eternity forever unrelated to the calendar or the striking clock” (120)

All of the characters in the book seem to have their own flash memories that they keep and in reflecting on those memories they grow to occupy time and become over-attributed with significance as totems of memory. Some of those memories are, in the moment they were formed, insignificant and do not warrant their significance or longevity.

Kant says that time is part of the medium of pure intuition that we experience subjectively. There is no time that one can point to objectively. Its presence is only felt as the change in things that exist in space, ourselves included. But the images of these disappeared women are unchanging. The women are forever the same age, forever dressed as they were, their personalities forever as they were in the moment they were suddenly lost. They do not change with time or fade out and away but instead remain as persistent as an ache that cannot be soothed.

I’m glad that this book caught my attention, even if it was for the superficial similarity in place names. Whereas this Hanging Rock is a volcanic monolith in Australia, the Hanging Rock that immediately came to mind for me is a state park in my home state of North Carolina. Totally unrelated.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Picnic en Hanging Rock’, de la australiana Joan Lindsay, publicada a finales de los sesenta, se ha convertido en una obra de culto. En ella, la escritora nos presenta una peculiar novela de misterio, aunque no se rige estrictamente por los parámetros al uso de dicho género, una novela que atrapa al lector desde su principio. Mediante una inteligente estructura y dosificación de la intriga, la historia nos presenta la extraña desaparición de tres alumnas y una profesora, pertenecientes al prestigioso Colegio Appleyard, en un picnic celebrado en el día de San Valentín del año 1900.

El lugar en el que tiene lugar el picnic se llama Hanging Rock, una zona boscosa y rocosa plagada de precipicios y escarpaduras. En un momento concreto de la excursión, cuatro alumnas deciden explorar en solitario los alrededores, pero solo una de ellas volverá con el resto del grupo. Por otra parte, la señora McGraw, profesora de matemáticas, que hasta hacía poco estaba con el grupo principal, también desaparece sin razón aparente.

Resulta interesante la manera en que Joan Lindsay va desvelando los diferentes hechos, de forma paulatina, lo que obliga al lector a continuar leyendo hasta conocer el final. Pero la novela no se centra únicamente en lo acaecido en Hanging Rock. Es más interesante si cabe el cisma que se crea en el internado de Appleyard. Más allá del suspense, que lo hay, la autora logra plasmar una imaginativa lectura del postcolonialismo, en una Australia que todavía vive anquilosada bajo el Imperio Británico. De igual modo, cabe resaltar la distancia moral de los personajes, unos anclados en el pasado y en lo etéreo, y otros en el presente y en lo físico, pero todos ellos bajo un punto en común, el miedo de lo sucedido.

Para el lector queda la pregunta de si lo acaecido se basa en hechos reales o ficticios, respuesta que la autora nunca desveló. Tal vez esto sea parte del éxito de la novela. Pero en todo caso, lo importante son los hechos que se plantean y cómo se expanden, más allá del misterio. Sin duda, ‘Picnic en Hanging Rock’ se trata de una excepcional novela.

[Janelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved reading this again (first read quite a while ago in high school). The book is definitely better without the missing chapter. I like the open ended mystery of it all. I loved the contrasts Lindsay sets up in the book, the different classes, the English style gardens alongside the natural bushland, the age of the rock formation in the millions of years compared to the youth of the students. The silliness of the education the girls are receiving (eg. memorising poetry) when they are heading to the bush with venomous snakes and poisonous ants! The women and girls still wearing corsets, stockings and gloves on a hot summer’s day. So much more. The latter events as the effects of the incident play out on the surrounding characters kept my interest right till the end. A great read.

“Appleyard College was already, in the year nineteen hundred, an architectural anachronism in the Australian bush – a hopeless misfit in time and place”

“Insulated from natural contacts with earth, air and sunlight, by corsets pressing on the solar plexus, by voluminous petticoats, cotton stockings and kid boots, the drowsy well-fed girls lounging in the shade were no more a part of their environment than figures in a photograph album, arbitrarily posed against a backcloth of cork rocks and cardboard trees.”

“He reminded himself that he was in Australia now: Australia, where anything might happen”

“Confronted by such monumental configurations of nature the human eye is woefully inadequate. Who can say how many or how few of its unfolding marvels are actually seen, selected and recorded by the four pairs of eyes now fixed in staring wonder at the Hanging Rock?”

“In the noonday stillness all living creatures except man, who long ago renounced the god-given sense of balance between rest and action, had slowed down their normal pace.”

[Paul Ataua · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end". - Philip Larkin

This story is about a disappearance of three school girls and one governess while on a picnic at Hanging Rock. Reflecting on the Larkin quote, it starts well by creating a mysterious vanishing, then loses its way and focus by focusing on the relationships between people at the school, and finally returns to the core of the story at the end. The four stars had something as much to do with the Peter Weir movie I saw years ago as with the book itself. I enjoyed the novel, but might have been confused had it not been for the movie. A welcome closure for seventies movies goers?

[Ana WJ]

Wrapping up THOTS on Patreon soon

[~Madison · Rating 1 out of 5]

would rather snort crushed up shards of glass than ever read this again

[_inbetween_ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Surprisingly superficial. Instead of "a sense of evil" and "inexplicable terror", Lindsay has all her bad characters be ugly (ie. big or fat) and all her pretty characters be good (ie. lovely, beautiful, elegant, slim). Not a mention goes by without Miranda's shining hair, Irma's lovely curls and stunning face or Madame's slim figure. I was hoping for irony, but Lindsay seriously stipulates that Irma's loving nature makes her deride unattractive(ly dressed) people, and it's completely okay that the driver despises Edith, because she is fat, and therefore whenever she says something (very similar to what others also say) it's marked as stupid and vile. Each single time. The bad guys come to gruesome ends that makes me think Lindsay was trying to exact revenge on some of her own teachers, because the headmistress was no better or worse than any of her ilk for most of the book. The pretty ones all marry and the ugly ones die young, as even a later "newspaper article" reaffirms.

The mystery - what mystery?. I had known the story for decades, seen most of, if not all of Weir's famous film, and I had read the real background (IIRC there was no fact at all, it's based on a poem) a few years ago. The book is as vague as the articles and the film promised, but unlike them I now no longer care or want to know what "really" happened, mainly because I'm convinced it isn't smarts and literariness but rather shallowness that made Lindsay make it mysterious - the story of Sara is blatantly obvious, appearances by ghosts ridiculous, and a scene with a policeman and his wife towards the end straight out of an afternoon TV series.

"Dainty female rituals" are also hardly the focus, the purposely impossible mention of lost corsets aside, and while I liked how Lindsay created "atmosphere" on the way to the picknick ground, this description of nature, and a second one as the two young men ride to the rock on a different road, are all that make it "Australian". Nature is simply described as it is, and it could have been done so much more harrowingly or frighteningly (the only spider that actually appears is at the very end *g*). It was enjoyably described, but certainly not a cause for anything like horror.

The only thing I would like to know is if Lindsay intended for the two young men to end up as a m/m couple or not. While the toff had fallen in love with the elegantly lovely owner of the shiny hair, the grunt had fallen for the ravishingly beautiful owner of the raven ringlets - who in turn had realised the toff was her love at first sight. This may be the reason they don't marry - or the way the two young man admire and praise each other, and how grunt lies naked as toff visits him. The pretty women are "saved from lesbianism" by their rewards, ie. marriages, but the closest bonds and most mentioned love in this book is always between friends of the same sex. There is NO hint whatsoever of anything sexual there, but I'll leave you with the possibility so there's at least something not wishy-washy Mary Sue about the story.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although we are necessarily concerned, in a chronicle of events, with physical action by the light of day, history suggests that the human spirit wanders farthest in the silent hours between midnight and dawn. Those dark fruitful hours, seldom recorded, whose secret flowerings breed peace and war, loves and hates, the crowning or uncrowning of heads.

This fictional story about the mysterious disappearance of three young ladies and a governess from a Valentine's Day picnic at Australia's Hanging Rock in the year 1900 has gained notoriety due to the popular film version, as well as for its unresolved ending. The gothic setting adds to the sinister atmosphere as the public veneer of Appleyard College and its Headmistress begins to crack while suspense builds. The final chapter explaining what actually happened was wisely excised by the publishers; those who are interested can track down its posthumous publication, although the story is more compelling without it.

[Bren fall in love with the sea. · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Although we are necessarily concerned, in a chronicle of events, with physical action by the light of day, history suggests that the human spirit wanders farthest in the silent hours between midnight and dawn".
― Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock

Sigh. Another one that so many people adored that I just did not enjoy all that much.

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT:

I did not love it.

I only just read this book last year. I am including spoilers because I want to speak about the book as a whole including the ending.

So..there were a few things that dampened my enjoyment of this. First off, for some reason, I'd heard of this book and always thought it was (completely) non fiction. The fact is, there was an introduction that tipped me off to what really happens and spoiled my enjoyment of the book because the whole premise, of coarse, is what happened to the girls. Also I saw some spoilers on here. I inadvertently read about an ending the writer had in mind. All that dampened my enjoyment of the book.

So I thought this was going to be a story that was a bit more creepy with a genuine question mark about why the students vanished. From what I read, an answer was given by the writer but much later on. I read that answer, so the book immediately lost whatever fascination it held for me. That does not mean someone else will not enjoy it but I will say try not to read any reviews with spoilers, (and some do NOT say spoilers). Also do not read any introductions included unless you want to know a whole lot more about the story then you should know going in.

Beyond even that though, I was not as involved as I would have liked to be. Certain aspects were dull and when the girls do vanish, I did not find it especially gripping but then again like I said I had more answers from introduction and spoilers.

And there is alot that goes on back at the school. It was a tough book to read. I honestly did feel bored at certain moments.

It was not a bad read but not one I am likely to pick up again.