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 girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned…

This book felt like a mixture of Enid Blyton, Jane Austen and Agatha Christie. The opening scene depicts excitable schoolgirls on Valentine’s Day (think end of term at Mallory Towers or St Clare’s) heading out for a special picnic at Hanging Rock in the Australian summer sun. As the blurb describes, the picnic turns into a disaster when three of the most senior girls go missing at the Rock.

The police investigate and the characters speculate about what has happened. The locals begin to gossip, the press reports the incident and the school’s reputation steadily deteriorates. As the story develops, the focus shifts away from the mystery itself and instead towards the way in which the incident at Hanging Rock has impacted and changed each of the characters’ lives.

Something I liked about Lindsay’s description of the characters is that it was multi-faceted. Because each character is often described from other characters’ points of view, they each become increasingly complex, with different qualities that they display to different people.

I also liked the fact that some of the storylines don’t follow the path you expect them to when they are introduced. At one point in the story, there is a hint of a budding Jane Austen-like romance, with neither party openly expressing any feelings towards the other but with parents and parents’ friends commenting on how well-matched the couple is. I had thought this would all tie up nicely at the end and was pleasantly surprised that it took a different turn. The same applied to the investigation about the missing girls. I got very near the end of the book and the mystery still hadn’t been resolved. Without giving anything away, the book ends in an unusual way for what essentially seems like a murder mystery.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a great combination of (generally) likeable characters and familiar settings contrasted with a sinister incident which casts a cloud over all of their lives and choices. It’s light-hearted enough to enjoy on holiday (if you want that kind of thing) but serious enough that it leaves you thinking.