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 landscapeA 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 Ro...

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 themse...

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 Ha...

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 myster...

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 chara...

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 whi...

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...

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 tr...

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, ...

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 Pengui...