A conversation about an idyllic nightmare

A conversation about two books between Sharon and Michelle.

M:  There is a book that has been haunting me.  First, it haunted me as a movie, which I watched back in the 1990s.  Then, it haunted me because I hadn’t read the book yet (that took a while, finally read it in 2022, phew).  Finally, several months later, it haunted me within another book!!!  Madness!

 

What is this willful book?  It is none other than the Australian masterpiece, Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joanna Lindsay.  

 

The dreamlike movie of the same title (1975) was directed by Peter Weir, in his iconically surreal manner (his Last Wave also made a deep impression on me in my 20s).  The novel was written based on a series of dreams Joanna Lindsay had, and wasn’t published in the US until Penguin brought it back to life in 2014 (so I guess I can be excused for not having read it until recently). 

 

And the third element? 

Well… that’s how this post happened.  I had picked up Riley Sager’s The Last Time I Lied and was intrigued by it immediately.  It wasn’t the first Riley Sager I’d read, that was Home Before Dark.  The book starts by introducing us to our narrator, Emma, an artist who is gaining notice for her mysterious paintings.  What no one know is that these dark wooded landscapes each hide three missing girls from Emma’s past.

 

I devoured The Last Time I Lied in a matter of days (rare for me), and found myself haunted by it in a way which distinctly reminded me of Lindsay’s book.  I mentioned this to Sharon as I was in the process of reading it.  It wasn’t even so much the matching set of missing girls, three from Appleyard College in Picnic at Hanging Rock, and three from Camp Nightingale in Sager’s book.  It was moreso the dreamlike summer atmosphere, the liminal spaces being explored by the girls outside of their normal lives while away at camp, and then off-hours in forbidden adventures outside of the camp.  

S:  Michelle first pointed out the connection between Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1967) and The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager (2018). It’d been a few years since I read the latter and more than a few since I read the former. I don’t need much encouragement to reread anything by Sager and I knew Picnic was an excellent book. What’s funny to me is how it felt like I was reading it for the first time. See, I didn’t watch the TV mini-series starring Natalie Dormer even though I think she’s terrific. It’s the books I love, not as much the adaptations.

 

I read Hanging Rock and The Last Time I Lied pretty much side by side. Two or three chapters in one then the other. I did this over a period of two days. Taking notes throughout.

 

It had escaped me that Joan Lindsay’s book had inspired The Last Time I Lied, but rereading them the way I did it was so obvious. I mean that in the best way possible. It’s as if Sager extended this beautiful haunting classic story into something modern and more relatable with a power all its own. He absolutely captured the atmosphere of Picnic at Hanging Rock.

 

Opening lines:

Lindsay – “a shimmering summer morning warm and still w/ cicadas shrilling all through breakfast from the locust trees outside the dining room windows and bees murmuring above the pansies bordering the drive”

 

Sager – “This is how it begins. You wake to sunlight whispering through the trees just outside the windows. It’s a faint light, weak and gray at the edges. Dawn still shedding the skin of night.”

 

The image of Lindsay’s book is blurred and distant with Sager telescoping in so it becomes granular. With Lindsay it is gorgeous and dark and you can only guess. There is no opportunity for closure. Sager gives us that as much as is possible.

 

M:  The setting (beyond the warm weather) couldn’t be more different between the two books.  Picnic at Hanging Rock is sunstruck late Victorian Australia, arid, all sandstone and dust, peppered with desert-dwelling plants, parched and sparse with a fringe of greenery and forest.  The Last Time I Lied is a wooded lake, rich with birdsong, treeshadow, and moss, carpeted and cloaked by water and woods.

 

At Hanging Rock, there seems to be no space for secrets, no place to hide, which makes the disappearances all the more unsettling.  At Camp Nightingale, there are too many places to hide.  While the disappearances are upsetting, they don’t defy explanation.  The wilderness around the lake’s dark water closes in and thwarts searchers.  The sunbleached stony heights of Picnic Rock stand brazenly out and dare searchers to exhaust and dehydrate themselves in their futile quest.

 

S:  Hanging Rock is a real-life geological formation in southeastern, Australia. Sager’s fictional Camp Nightingale is a formerly prestigious summer camp marred by tragedy. It is set next to the eerily dark Lake Midnight.

 

Both settings draw on the unrestrained dangers of the natural world and its bond with isolated ancient places. How that wildness encourages these young ladies to break the rules or at the very least creates a space for them to do so.

 

In both books the female characters are not exactly heroines and not entirely innocent though they seem it. Like the wild places they inhabit in the story they cannot be held back.

 

A comparison in characters:

Lindsay’s Miranda to Sager’s Vivian:

Miranda is described as tall and pale, with straight corn-yellow hair. She is seen as a swan – a beautiful creature. Vivian is bold in every way, pale and with The blond hair right out of a shampoo ad.” Both popular and written with a depth not afforded the usual cliché.

 

Lindsay’s Natalie to Sager’s Allison:

Much is made of both their facial structure (Natalie’s geometric with a high forehead and square chin and Allison has apple cheeks and a slender nose). Both look wholesome.

 

Lindsay’s Edith to Sager’s Emma:

Emma definitely made out better than Edith. The former was described as “plain as a frog,” “pasty-faced fourteen-year-old with the contours of an overstuffed bolster,” the fat one, the one with limited intelligence. This is what Lindsay sees and we are not provoked to think more.  Emma thankfully, has grown from whatever ugly duckling stage she might have had into a rising star in the NY art scene.

 

Woe be the person to cross these women! Mrs. Hester Appleyard is Lindsay’s harsh and terrifying head mistress/founder of the school. Wealthy, determined, secretive, and daunting.  Francesca Harris-White owner/founder of the camp is all of these, but not as frightening as Mrs. Appleyard. Not a criticism, merely how I read them.

 

I enjoyed both books. As someone who spends a lot of time outdoors, occasionally on my own in the woods, I can tell you I have the utmost respect for the natural world. And yes, I would absolutely have climbed up those rocks and swum in that lake. Fortunately, I’m still around.

 

Criterion's cover art for their rerelease.

M:  It wasn’t until I finished The Last Time I Lied and read the afterword by Sager that I realized how right my instincts were!  He had deliberately riffed on the dreamy haze / nightmare sharp glow of Picnic at Hanging Rock, drawing from the haunting mood of Peter Weir's excellent movie, but not allowing himself to read the original book by Joanna Lindsay until long after he'd completed his own novel.

Both books are well worth your reading them.  Lindsay’s book was a perfect read in the thick of winter for me, especially February and March where everything seems to slow down to a trickle and reading about hot, dry places on the other side of the world is a balm, no matter how intriguingly nightmarish they might be.  And I would recommend reading The Last Time I Lied in the thick of summer, when the sun is so hot you flee for the wooded shadows, and the humidity makes you not want to move any more.  

 

Criterion was kind enough to rerelease the film in recent years, so you can watch it via their streaming channel or by picking up a DVD or Blu-ray of the film.  There's a good trailer here, if you'd like to get a taste of the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_XNrF6lsvw