Picnic at Hanging Rock [Library Binding]

Joan Lindsay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1999

On St Valentine's day in 1900 a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some were never to return. This book was first published in 1967.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 192 pages
• Publisher: Buccaneer Books (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0899665608
• ISBN-13: 978-0899665603
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #350,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars OOOOOOOOOOH, IT'S GOOD!, September 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Library Binding)

I had to hunt for a copy of this out-of-print novel through the internet, and order it used from a bookstore in Australia, but it was well worth the effort! Beautifully written, this 1986 re-issue has period photographs that add greatly to the enigmatic story. The excellent 1975 Peter Weir movie version is quite faithful to the book. Interestingly, there is a Chapter 18 that is considered the "lost" final chapter that resolves the mystery. Joan Lindsay wrote it, but was asked by the publishers to withhold it from publication pending the movie rights. The caveat was that the chapter would only be published after her death. Lindsay died in 1984, her book was re-issued in 1986 (minus Chapter 18) and the "missing" chapter was finally published in 1987 under the title "Secret of Hanging Rock." If you can find "Picnic at Hanging Rock," buy it & savor it. It's THAT good. Rent the video too!

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting and enigmatic tale, March 5, 2001

By 

G F Ditcham (Tonbridge, Kent United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Library Binding)

Having seen Peter Weir's film before reading Joan Lindsay's novel it
is difficult for me to review the book without referring to the film.
The film leaves out some details from the novel but both convey the
same sense of beauty, horror and loss, longing and haunting. We are
told on the book's cover that the story is based around a St
Valentine's day picnic in 1900, and the disappearance of some of the
picnic party.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is Joan Lindsay's only work of
fiction, although its many themes are firmly based on reality. The
story covers the loss of youth, beauty and innocence; love and
sexuality; discrimination, prejudice and class privilege; fear,
passion and the breakdown of order; the English Empire in a foreign
environment, the clash of alien cultures, and the end of an era;
beliefs and life's purpose; life's myriad web and coincidences;
destiny and fate; and Time itself, reflected in Miranda's favourite
quote "Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and
place".

Joan Lindsay's descriptions of the Australian bush and
wildlife are as evocative as Russell Boyd's cinematography. The style
and language of her writing is deliberate to emulate turn-of-the 20th
century writers.

The girls images were already imprinted on my mind
when I read the book and the casting in the film seemed to me perfect,
especially that of Anne Louise Lambert as Miranda and Karen Robson as
Irma. Joan Lindsay described Mademoiselle Dianne de Poitiers, the
French teacher and the girls' confidante, as having blond hair, yet
the casting of the excellent Helen Morse was inspired.

Joan Lindsay
describes Miranda as a Botticelli Angel from the Galleria Degli Uffizi
in Florence, and Peter Weir specifically uses the image of the birth
of Venus. Miranda is all knowing and shows compassion to Sara and
Edith the least popular girl's at the school. Anne Louise Lambert's
portrayal of Miranda with her ethereal beauty and enigmatic smile
captures the vision perfectly, and is reminiscent of the knowing smile
on the death mask of the famous "L'Inconnue de la Seine", who
coincidentally died around 1900 in Paris.

The story's many strands
are reflected by the girl's layers of virginal white dress
representing suppression and restriction, with gloves, stockings and
shoes being shed by the more enlightened girls on their ascent of the
rock. Peter Weir used several techniques to convey the many layers of
the story including shots into mirrors as into another
dimension.

Joan Lindsay made a literary mistake which Cliff Green
repeated in the film script - Felicia Hemanes' famous Victorian
recital piece is "Casabianca" (about the Battle of The Nile),
and not "The Wreck of the Hesperus" (the captain ties his
daughter to the mast to save her from the storm which eventually sinks
the ship) which is by Henry Longfellow. Discrimination is shown by
Mrs Appleyard against Sara (an orphan) who is punished for not
learning the poem, by being kept back from the picnic, whereas clearly
Irma cannot remember it (on the picnic she can only quote the first
line) but her family's wealth and her position as heiress obviously
carry influence.

The importance of time and place are shown in that
Joan Lindsay based the location of her story on Hanging Rock near
mount Macedon in Victoria, which is a sacred Aboriginal site. To
provide added authenticity Peter Weir filmed at the rock during the
same six weeks of summer. Aboriginals believe time is not linear and
Joan Lindsay refused to have clocks in her home, hence the title of
her autobiography "Time Without Clocks". At Hanging Rock both
Mr Hussey's and Miss McCraw's watches stopped at twelve o'clock.
14 February 1900 actually fell on a Wednesday, not a Saturday, unless =
Joan Lindsay used the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian, so that =
the eleven days were not lost? The open endedness of the novel
is deliberate to mirror life where we may learn or uncover some
secrets but never understand the mystery. Plenty of clues and
coincidences are related, together with unexplained details such as
the absence of scratches to Irma's bare feet, yet identical injuries
appear on her and Michael's heads, very reminiscent of the
X-Files.

This is a very thought provoking and inspiring story that
will haunt you. I find the book and the film compliment each other
exceptionally well, so if you haven't already done so I urge you to
also seek out the film.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get it if you can find it., May 27, 2000

By 

Matt C. Stedman "matt" (Sedona, Arizona USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Library Binding)

I probably would have liked this better if I hadn't seen the movie first, a lot of the suspense was ruined because I knew what was going to happen. Still, its a very good book and I recommend it. Plus there is one final horror at the end of the book that wasn't in the movie (I won't give it away, of course). It actually seemed to me that Peter Weir's film created a much more eerie atmosphere than the original book especially with its scenes at the Rock itself with its shots of weird animals and rocks that look like human faces. It seemed that much of the focus in the book was on how the disappearences affected the people who didn't disappear while the movie focused on the strangeness of the event. This causes the book and movie to be different experiences even though the story is exactly the same. The book is a fascinating portrait of Australian life at the turn of the century while the movie is a masterpiece of psychological horror, not that the book isn't frightening or that the movie doesn't recreate how life was at that time, there's just a different focus. Both the book and the movie are excellent and both are worth taking a look at.