Review of Picnic At Hanging Rock 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.

Picnic At Hanging Rock is a mystery classic, a surreal novel that takes place at a boarding school in Australia. When 4 people vanish, the town is ablaze with gossip about the fates of these three girls and their teacher. The book tells the stories of many of the people connected to the story and the aftermath of this devastating event.

The prose in this is quite lovely, it has a dreamlike quality that is perfect. However I did often get confused about whose viewpoint we'd just switched to and who was doing what, due to the book very rapidly switching people from paragraph to paragraph.

I loved the friendship between Albert and Mike. Polar opposites in that Mike is a wealthy toff and Albert grew up in an orphanage, his tattoos making him look 'rough', their two personalities compliment one another and I always felt at ease when in their presence.

I did find it strange that this entire story centers around a boarding school but after the girls and the teacher disappears, we hardly ever see the world from the girl's viewpoints, more often the teachers. It did make me realise that a book released last year, Wilder Girls, is shockingly similar to the point where I wonder if it was a retelling.