Picnics, Lies, and Videotape

Mystery Club #2

There once was a book that haunted me.  

First, it haunted me as a movie, which I watched on VHS tape back in the 1990s, when I worked at Videoport.  

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 from within another book!!!  Madness!  What is this willful book?

It is none other than the Australian masterpiece, Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan 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, another Videoport-era watch).  

 

The novel was written based on a series of dreams Joan 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 Last Time I Lied starts by introducing us to our narrator, Emma, an artist who is gaining notice for her mysterious paintings.  What no one know is that each of these dark wooded landscapes hide three missing girls from Emma’s past, obscured but present under their layers of paint.

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.  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. 

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, made more uncomfortable by school uniforms and formal dress requirements.   

 

The Last Time I Lied is a wooded lake, rich with birdsong, treeshadow, and moss, carpeted and cloaked by water and woods.  While the camp's founder, a foreboding presence who lives on-site, is not to be argued with, within the strictures of the camp the young women find ample room for pushing boundaries.

 

At Hanging Rock, there seems to be no space for secrets, no place to hide, which makes the disappearances all the more unsettling.  The sunbleached stony heights of Picnic Rock stand brazenly out and dare searchers to exhaust and dehydrate themselves in their futile quest.  

 

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.

 

It wasn’t until I finished reading The Last Time I Lied, and in a mood of thoroughness read the afterword by Sager that I realized how right my instincts were!  Sager 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 reading.  

 

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.  

 

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 once you reach the shade.  

 

Criterion's cover art for their rerelease.

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