Picnic at Hanging Rock, by Joan Lindsay

I loved this book.

LOVED.

I saw the Peter Weir movie a million years ago—I was in high school, or maybe home on break from college?—and even though I adored it then, I haven’t revisited it, so all I really remembered going into the book is that it was largely quiet and involved a lot of gauzy shots of girls in white dresses. (Josh also saw it a million years ago and did NOT enjoy the experience, but has already said that he’s up for trying it again because tastes change. Who knows, maybe this time he’ll love it and I’ll hate it? (Doubtful, though, because like I said, I LOVED the book. I’m so curious to re-watch the movie AND watch the 2018 miniseries NOW! RIGHT! NOW! for the first time, gahhhh why do I have to go to work today??))

ANYWAY, the very very basic premise of Picnic at Hanging Rock is:

Valentine’s Day, 1900. A group of girls at an Australian boarding school go with some of their teachers to a local landmark, Hanging Rock, for a picnic.

Three of the girls and one of the teachers disappear.

There is a massive search, both by the police and by members of the public, but there is very little information to be had… and meanwhile, everything everything EVERYTHING back at the school starts to go downhill. Paranoia, grief, suspicion, isolation, and anger set in.

Ahhhhh, like I said, I loved it.

It’s not a story for people who like tidy endings, though, hoo boy. Which is exactly my jam—I have a tendency to actively DISLIKE what I see as OVERLY-tidy endings, even—but, as we all know, there is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to these things. The foreword by Maile Meloy in the Penguin Classics edition talks a bit about the ending, actually, and it turns out that Joan Lindsay originally included one, but the publisher nixed it! Which adds to the fascination for me—I deliberately spoiled myself on that front & so it was so cool to read it for the first time with her original ending in mind.

But to be completely honest, the SOLUTION doesn’t matter? Because even though you can see it there between the lines, the story’s not about the solution.

It’s more about the ripple effect that spreads out from the incident itself. AND it’s about fate and chance, how our actions and choices affect so many people that we don’t even know, and how overwhelming the randomness of life can be (if you make the mistake of thinking about it too hard, you’ll end up second-guessing literally every single thing you do, I know this because my brain does it ALL the time and I freeze like a deer in headlights until I get snapped out of it):

It is probably just as well for our nervous equilibrium that such cataclysms of personal fortune are usually disguised as ordinary everyday occurrences, like the choice of boiled or poached eggs for breakfast. (171)

But it’s ALSO about how most humans are basically clueless interlopers in nature—it’s fair to say that this book TOTALLY regards nature as capital-N Nature—and in comparison to the natural world, are a blip. Or at least, that’s how I read it.

The narrative voice is surprisingly funny and self-aware:

The Headmistress, gloomily attacking a lamb cutlet at the opposite end, might have been engaged in expertly dismembering a man-eating shark. Actually she had far more important fish to fry, the cutlet being no more than an outward symbol of inner conflict concerning the two letters, one from Mr Leopold and one from Miranda’s father, still unanswered on her desk. (149)

…

Reg Lumley, dank, pompous and half-baked, was a clerk in a Gippsland store, holding Views and Opinions on every subject under the sun from Female Education to the incompetence of the local Fire Brigade. (152-3)

…and surprisingly sexy (and, I’d argue, queer), and feels more modern (but also timeless?) that I’d have expected from a book first published in 1967.

I ILLed this copy, but I’ll be buying it for myself AND for the library. (I already have a patron who wants to read it because I wouldn’t shut up about it yesterday, but what else is new?)