Book Review: ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ by Joan Lindsay
It’s that time of the podcast season once again where we explore a dark academia adjacent title, and that title for season 10 is ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ by Joan Lindsay - a book that I’ve had on my shelves and TBR for years and years and years. It has survived multiple moves and countless culls, and I’m honestly left wondering why now that I’ve finished it.
I appreciate it and i can see why some people love it so much, but it just didn’t work for me.
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.
Doesn’t it sound perfect for the dark academia adjacent title for The Dark Academicals?
That’s what I originally thought and it’s why I nominated it for this season (Sarah had never even heard of the novel), so I have to take responsibility here.
What alienated me was the narration style. We start with the picnic and then we seem to zip all over the place with different people or different relevance to the incident or the fallout of the incident, and I do understand the motive behind that - we got to the far-reaching ramifications on this town of the disappearances of the girls - but I just didn’t connect with anyone. The narrative didn’t focus on anyone enough for me to form an emotional link with, and that made that I wasn’t involved in the wider story and mystery, especially going into the novel knowing that I wouldn’t find out what happened to the missing students.
Something I did love, though, was the vividness of the settings and how shockingly they contrasted against each other. The wild, brutal and unforgiving landscape of the Australian outback where the girls go missing, and the rigid, British Victorian style boarding school that they escaped from for the day. It brings up discussions and conflicts of the impact on Australia of British colonialism, class and social dynamics being translated to somewhere where they don’t necessarily fit, and the idea that some things (nature and teenage girls) are too strong for the forces of propriety and order.
I’m really glad that I read ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ and finally got it off of my TBR, but it’s not one I’ll be going back to.
Written by Sophie
