While not a theme exactly new in the annals of literary fiction (every writer of the Gothic tradition has well worn the schoolgirl-in-jeopardy storyline down to its withered bone), it is Lindsay’s fine and immaculate writing that reveals a startling undertaking in narrative style as she ploughs the depths of a most unusual drama. Lindsay’s novel works a kind of narrative that is at once a critique on the stifling mores of upper crust society and a quietly unnerving horror story. Things are only further complicated when one of the missing girls is later found alive. Investigations are deployed and all manner of gossip finds its way to every end of the country.Īs the faculty and student body try to come to grips with the harrowing reality of their sudden and distressing circumstances, the social pecking order of their prestigious boarding school slowly disintegrates. During an exploratory walkabout, four of the girls mysteriously disappear when they try to climb the summit of Hanging Rock. Supposedly based on or inspired by true events (a claim that the author prefaces the novel with but had never in her lifetime authenticated), Picnic at Hanging Rock, is the story of a group of boarding school girls at the turn of the century who, on a fateful Valentine’s Day, take a field trip to Hanging Rock (a rural area in Australia, much of which was formed by centuries of volcanic activity). Picnic at Hanging Rock, first published in 1967, not only brought to the nation’s consciousness the magma-deep mysticism birthed centuries back by Australia’s aboriginals, but it inspired a worldwide curiosity which has since turned Hanging Rock into a popular tourist attraction. Joan Lindsay’s one-time literary curio has grown to become one of Australia’s most important and beloved contributions to literature.

Book picnic at hanging rock