A review by allo_leo
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

4.0

I was not expecting much when I first picked up this book. All I wanted was to expend my horizons, and read a classic that didn't originate from England, France or America (granted, australian's literature might not be drastically different from the aforementioned countries, but still). The reviews I found online made me scared I would find this novel boring and hard to finish. I'm glad to say that it was not the case. On the contrary, it was difficult to put the book down! The hope of perhaps gathering little crumbs of information regarding the disappearance of the girls kept me interested in the story until the end. Some people stated that their main problem was the lack of closure; the utter darkness in which the reader is left even after they finish the last page. "Wait, we don't actually get to know what happened to those girls?" I think that any explanation would ruin the power of the mystery created by Lindsay, not to mentioned that (like a lot of readers pointed out) the book is not so much a thriller about a disappearance (who did it? Why?), and more about the effect this kind of event has on the rest of the characters.

Unrelated, but the whole Sara situation was so incredibly pathetic, it made me want to cry. Her story deeply marked me, and I still think about it.