I may be influenced by Weir’s film adaptation (which I had to study for year 12 Literature), but Picnic at Hanging Rock completely blew me away. Lindsay has such a dreamy, vivid way of writing and I loved how she was able to make me feel like I was one with the book. 

If you like your novels wrapped up with a neat bow, then I’m afraid this story may not be for you. Interpretations are very open-ended, but I kinda like that about this novel. I loved studying this book because I could have my own theories on what happened behind the disappearance of the girls. Murder? Kidnapping? Running away? Aliens? All of these were valid points that my Lit classmates came up with (yes, I’m serious.)

All in all, you should give this novel a try if you love mysterious novels that involve overbearing figures in the early 1900s, Australia.

Beautifully written and atmospheric

I wish I liked this read more than I did. The backstory of the book itself and even the movie and tv series to me are far more interesting and add more depth to the story. This book has beautiful writing and is very visual in nature but this and the mystery itself is filled down by all the side plots and elements I didn’t care about. I wish this had been a novella and that the focus was narrowed to less characters. In essence this book had a good base idea to it but the pacing was incredibly slow and didn’t take the idea much further. 

Despite this being set in the summer, I found fall to be a very suitable time to be reading this - a mysterious disappearance that juxtaposes beautiful, vivid descriptions of the Australian natural landscape. The manner in which the book simultaneously tapped into these themes, and made them complement one another, was definitely its strongest aspect; Joan Lindsay was able to seamlessly transform a relaxing, jubilant, picturesque picnic on a sunny day into an unspoken, yet unmistakably omnipresent, horror that had much more far-reaching consequences than one would expect such a mere picnic outing to have. Yet Lindsay still made routine reference to Hanging Rock’s beauty and that of surrounding areas (even the beauty found in the world of Appleyard College) in spite of all that had occurred. This had the effect of magnifying just how jarring the effect was on the lives of those directly and indirectly involved, as well as depicting how quickly one’s sense of the familiar can be a painful - and in fact disturbing - reminder of the dark events that transpired.

My main complaint had to do with their being perhaps too much left to the imagination, and too much left unsaid. Although I understand and agree with the need to have some element of mystery as to what actually happened to the vanishing girls, it was done in a way that wasn’t really subtle -

for example, we read early on about Edith watching the girls walk away and her being unable to keep up, but not only is that moment never spoken of again (albeit partially due to Edith’s forgetting of it) but it appears entirely insignificant a detail - nothing explained later in the narrative is even remotely connected to this moment. I get the idea of trying to set an unsettling tone early on, but the way that it was completely ignored made it feel like what we read about at the picnic was not of any importance. This was again frustrating with the disappearance of Miss McCraw alongside the girls, with Edith again referencing having seen her and the detail not being brought up ever again. I understand the point of leaving some details unexplained and some aspects up to the imagination, but it felt like there was just no connection in the actual mystery itself - everything that happened felt so unaligned that it felt as though we were dealing with entirely separate mysteries rather than having them weave together.

Overall, I definitely respect what it was trying to do in terms of crafting a story that could show the simultaneous beauty and horror behind the natural world, as well as
how humans interact with tragic events (sensationalizing and personalizing them as well, as we saw with the townsfolk and the schoolfolk, respectively). While I do appreciate the intrigue that played into the story’s telling, it at times felt a little more undeveloped when intended to come across as unsolvable/unexplainable. Nevertheless I do think this is an enjoyable read for the imagery alone, which definitely kept me very invested in my reading.

I read this as part of my reading around the world challenge. It was just the right amount of mystery, supernatural, horror, and descriptions of 1900 Australia. Also, it's only 200 pages. Definitely worth the read.