I recently read Picnic at Hanging Rock for the first time; I did so because it was the subject of a fabulous production at my new school, Ascham, in Sydney Australia. Although I could only admire the production from afar, the pictures and reviews were fantastic, and I congratulate the girls on what was clearly a marvellous event. Of course, I am trying not to read too much into the fact that the Headmistress of the piece, who eventually goes mad, was from England; I just revelled in the work (and will remind all who are listening that I am actually Scottish born and bred, and not a bit like Mrs Appleyard …).
Picnic at Hanging Rock, written by Joan Lindsay in 1967, is, as you will know if you have read it, a brooding and menacing mystery set in Victoria, Australia in 1900, and tells the story of an ill-fated school outing to the Hanging Rock, and the consequences of this. It is a captivating tale, most unsettling, and certainly the kind of novel in which one can lose oneself on a long train or plane journey. It was turned into a film, which was widely acclaimed and which won awards for its cinematography; I can imagine this, and would certainly like to see it one day … but no film can ever replace the magic of the interplay between an author’s words and a reader’s imagination, and this I treasure.
In fact, it is precisely this that I am reminded of each time I read a great work of fiction. In our busy lives it can be hard to find the time to pause and read novels, poems and short stories – and, to be fair, there is a lot of rubbish to be found gracing the shelves of bookstores, masquerading as literature. But to be able to distinguish between good and bad, to understand the impact of powerfully written works of fiction, requires time, practice and immersion in the art. A book is a living thing; it exists not in the marks on the page, but in the interaction between reader and those words; the reader brings his or her experience and openness, while the words themselves are the best attempt of the author to communicate his or her intent, which will be interpreted in different ways by different holders of the book.
Reading opens up new worlds – new places, new people, new relationships, new emotions. As educators, we want our charges to learn the joy of these new worlds, and how to access them, which means that from time to time we must too ensure that we remind ourselves of this, through the discipline and joy of our own reading.
Reading Picnic at Hanging Rock was a great prompt to remember exactly this.
