The Wide, Wide Wednesday

[evelyn_b]

What I've Finished Reading

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay.

Confronted by such monumental configurations of nature the human eye is woefully inadequate. Who can say how many or how few of its unfolding marvels are actually seen, selected, and recorded by the four pairs of eyes now fixed in staring wonder at the Hanging Rock? Does Marion

Comments

[liadtbunny]

You've sold me on 'Picnic on Hanging Rock', I like the quote:)

“the panicked pachyderm.” Lol. Wish I could remember more of 'Clan of the Cave Bear'. I hope you know someone who can remember it more clearly. I know I read it all and er...

[evelyn_b]

Definitely recommend! It's a quick read, too, partly because it drags you in and partly because it's short.

Clan of the Cave Bear is such an ambitious idea for a book, and whenever it's actually moving forward as a story, it's fine, but it reads like the discovery draft of a good novella. I'll probably be remembering it fondly in about five years.

The specifics of the plot are not very memorable, I think? Ayla is Different but eventually comes to be Accepted, just like Anne of Green Gables - and like AoGG, it's highly episodic. There are some impressive episodes, but nothing really to rival The Raspberry Cordial Incident or The Time There Was a Mouse in the Sauce. But that's an unfair standard for any writer.

[liadtbunny]

Aah, short! Music to my ears.

I think I found the characters and situations predictable and hackneyed: I need a hypnotist;p Not the usual request, but a change from past live regression I'm sure.

[heliopausa]

I thought Clan of the Cave Bear was hilarious; Ayla was so wonderfully inventive. By the end I was waiting for her to invent boxed matches.

[evelyn_b]

She can't help inventing things! She doesn't have any inherited memories, so every moment is an invention!

Right now she's puzzling out the mystery of How Babies Get Made. The Clan have their own myth of reproduction, but Ayla isn't quite convinced.

[todayiamadaisy]

I don't know if your version of Picnic includes the "missing' final chapter, which Joan Lindsay's publisher persuaded her not to include in the book and was instead published posthumously? I would be happy to tell you what happened to the missing girls. (Her publisher was right, by the way.)

It is surprising how many people here think it is a true story. Hanging Rock itself has been included in a campaign this year to get people to move past the white myth of the books and instead learn about the Aboriginal history of the rock.

[evelyn_b]

It is surprising how many people here think it is a true story

I would not have expected that at all! But if there's a tourism industry around it (and a movie!), I can see how things could easily get confused. Good luck to the campaigners; real history can be a hard sell.

I absolutely do not want to know Joan Lindsay's solution to the mystery. Much better to leave it unsolved! If I want to read a mystery with a clear resolution at the end, I've got dozens.

[todayiamadaisy]

The 1975 movie is terrific, if you ever stumble across it. The most evocative use of panpipes in cinema, as demonstrated in the trailer. :-)

[silverflight8]

LOL. the part about the ugliness reminds me of sf/f that tries to describe alien features but instead kind of defaults to a human + 1 strange thing (and romance novels, trying to have their cake and eat it too, describing characters as ugly for their time but very hot for ours).

[evelyn_b]

I respect the difficulty of imagining alien life, so I'm mostly cool with Lazy Forehead Aliens and just get extra happy whenever anyone manages something really weird. But the romance thing makes me sad. If I can't have out-and-out plain or weird-looking characters, I'd much rather read about people who are hot for their own time, but ugly for ours, and to have all their outmoded charms described with gluttonous enthusiasm.