picnic at hanging rock – Emma's Biblio Treasures

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

Published 1967 by Vintage
Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

The classic, atmospheric Australian thriller about the mysterious disappearance of a group of young girls.

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 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.

Is Picnic at Hanging Rock fact or fiction? Only you can truly decide.

BUY HERE

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MY REVIEW:

Australia, 14th February 1900. On a sweltering summer’s day an idyllic picnic for the students at an exclusive ladies boarding school turns into a nightmare when three girls and their governess go missing at Hanging Rock. Eight days later, one of the girls is found, but she has no memories of what happened. The other two girls and their governess are never seen again.

Atmospheric, mysterious, hypnotic and ambiguous, Picnic at Hanging Rock is a mesmerising story. This 1967 classic has been on my TBR for many years. I became fascinated with the story after seeing the movie as a teenager and for many years I believed it was based on a true story. When I learned that it was actually a work of fiction, I knew I needed to read it. This month I finally decided to pick it up and listened to it on audiobook, which was a great choice as not only did the Australian accent of the narrator make it feel authentic, but the pipe music between each chapter adds to the haunting and unsettling vibe.

A sunny but sinister story, the book transports us back to 1900. A gorgeously gothic and melancholy Edwardian tale, Joan Lindsey’s evocative storytelling vividly sets the scene from the start. There is a hazy, dreamlike quality. A fever-dream where you are never quite sure what is real and what is fiction. I was enthralled and completely lost in the world Lindsay had created. It’s a story that captures the imagination. A puzzle steeped in the supernatural and unexplained that is waiting to be solved. But it ultimately remains without resolution. And that unending mystery is part of what makes this story so haunting and eerie.

Hanging Rock itself is an important part of this story, almost feeling like a character in its own right. An ancient place infused with mystery that is an indigenous sacred site, the book capitalises on that atmosphere to create a modern myth. It leaves us wondering if the rock really can devour people and make them vanish into thin air. And how did three people manage to disappear without a single trace?

Beautiful, languorous, obscure and unnerving, this is a perfect summer read that will linger long after reading.

Rating: ✮✮✮✮.5

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Joan Lindsay was born Joan à Beckett Weigall in Melbourne, Australia, in 1896. She attended Clyde Girls Grammar School, the model for Appleyard College in Picnic at Hanging Rock, and the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, where she studied painting. On Valentine’s Day 1922 she married Daryl Lindsay in London. She chose Valentine’s Day 1900 as the setting for Picnic at Hanging Rock, her best-known work, which was first published in 1967 and is the basis for the 1975 film of the same name by Peter Weir. She died in Melbourne in 1984.

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Thanks for reading, Bibliophiles xxxx

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Review: ‘The Van Apfel Girls are Gone’ by Felicity McLean ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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SYNOPSIS:

A compulsive, note-perfect debut for fans of The Virgin Suicides and Picnic at Hanging Rock.

‘We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song and when one came back, she wasn’t the one we were trying to recall to begin with’.

Tikka Malloy was eleven and one-sixth years old during the long summer of 1992, growing up in an isolated suburb in Australia surrounded by encroaching bushland. That summer, the hottest on record, was when the Van Apfel sisters – Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth – mysteriously disappeared during the school’s Showstopper concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river. Did they run away? Were they taken? While the search for the sisters unites the small community, the mystery of their disappearance has never been solved.

Now years later, Tikka has returned home and is beginning to make sense of that strange moment in time. The summer that shaped her. The girls that she never forgot.

Brilliantly observed, spiky, sharp, funny and unexpectedly endearing, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is part mystery, part coming-of-age-story – with a dark shimmering unexplained absence at its heart.

MY REVIEW:

The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is a beautifully haunting mystery about childhood, adolescence, secrets and regrets, that takes place over the course of one transformative and unforgettable summer.

Tikka Malloy is haunted by the disappearance of her school friends and neighbours, Hannah, Cordelia and Ruth Van Apfel. They vanished in the sweltering summer of 1992, when Tikka was eleven years old, and despite an extensive search no one ever learned the truth of what happened to the sisters. When Tikka travels back to the small, isolated suburb in Australia she was raised in, she decides it is finally time to make sense of her memories and discern the truth: not only to find out the fate of her friends but also to free herself from the torturous remorse she still feels.

I started reading this book with high hopes as while I have not yet read the books mentioned in the synopsis, I have seen both films and. they were stories that both fascinated and haunted me in a way that is unique to an unsolved mystery. Thankfully, it did not disappoint. I loved this book and find myself still thinking about the mysterious Van Apfel girls.

Hannah, Cordie and Ruth Van Apfel live on the same street as Tikka and her older sister, Laura. Cordie is the one everyone is drawn to: the beauty that shines out, the cool one, the rebellious one. Their parents are religious zealots and are terrified of their violent father. The five girls spend as much time as possible together although to Tikka’s frustration she is often lumped with seven-year-old Ruth, four years her junior, and left out of the older girl’s discussions and plans.

The night the sisters vanished and the events surrounding that night are burned into Tikka’s memory and she’s plagued by guilt and regret. When back in Australia she and her sister discuss the secrets they’ve held for twenty years. It was confusing for Tikka and Laura as they knew what they were seeing was wrong but were so young they didn’t know what to do about it or who, if anyone, they should turn to.

I loved this mesmerising novel. Atmospheric, delightful, captivating, nuanced and nostalgic but also somber, sinister and dire, it had me hooked from the first page. It explores how tragedy can shape our future and how we see things differently with an adult perspective versus a child’s eye. Will we find out what happened to Hannah, Cordie and Ruth? I will leave you to find out for yourself when you read it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Oneworld Publications, Point Blank and Felicity McLean for the chance to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Out now.

*Thank you to Felicity McLean for the permission to use her picture.