Today's Read & Giveaway: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

Imagine you're on a school outing, exploring some famous rock formations with three friends a teacher. When you return to the picnic grounds, however, you are all alone with no recollection of what happened to your companions. Murder, accident, or abduction? Will anyone ever discover the truth?

Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock--a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling all through breakfast from the loquat trees outside the dining-room windows and bees murmuring above the pansies bordering the drive. Heavy-headed dahlias flamed and drooped in the immaculate flowerbeds, the well-trimmed lawns steamed under the mounting sun. Already the gardener was watering the hydrangeas still shaded by the kitchen wing at the rear of the College. The boarders at Mrs Appleyard's College for Young Ladies had been up and scanning the bright unclouded sky since six o'clock and were now fluttering about in the holiday muslins like a flock of excited butterflies. Not only was it a Saturday and the long awaited occasion of the annual picnic, but Saint Valentine's Day, traditionally celebrated on the fourteenth of February by the interchange of elaborate cards and favours. All were madly romantic and strictly anonymous--supposedly the silent tributes of lovesick admirers; although Mr Whitehead the elderly English gardener and Tom the Irish groom were almost the only two males to be so much as smiled at during the term.

—Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (Penguin Classics, 2017, p. 1)

Quick Facts

• Setting: 1900, Mount Macedon area, Victoria, Australia
• Circumstances: On a school outing, three girls and a teacher disappear without a trace while hiking at Hanging Rock. Several people enter a dreamlike state after ascending the rocks, and other members of the school community are forever changed by the events of that February day. The search for the missing women and the mystery of what happened consumes the bulk of the novel.
• Genre: mystery, classic
• Things to know: The book is written in a way that makes readers wonder if the events described are based on fact or fiction (the author adds the note: "Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves"). A movie based on the book was released in 1975, and a television mini-series is supposed to air this year, on the 50th anniversary of the book's publication.
• Hanging Rock culture: Fans of the book are said to visit the Hanging Rock area, where they search for landmarks mentioned in the novel. Even the visitor center is supposed to perpetuate the story of the missing girls and, in particular, of Miranda, one of the students who vanished into the rocks. Other groups have protested that the significance of Hanging Rock to Aborigine history has been overshadowed by the book and are working hard to restore the truth.
  
• The missing chapter: According to several websites, Lindsay's editor decided to cut the original final chapter, which is supposed to present a different perspective on what happened at Hanging Rock. That chapter was later published as a standalone, after the author's death.
  

The Giveaway

Thanks to the nice people at Penguin Books, I can offer one of my readers a copy of the Penguin Classic, 50th Anniversary edition of Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock. All you have to do to be entered for a chance to win is to have a USA mailing address and fill out the following form. I'll pick a winner via a random number generator on October 24. Once the winner has been confirmed, I'll delete all personal information from my computer. Good luck.