Oh, yes; before the film there was a book, and a clever one at that, as Joan Lindsay piles horror upon unnamed horror in her tale of the turn-of-the-century St Valentine's Day picnic which went disastrously and inexplicably wrong. The novel imbues both the polite little rituals of the Appleyard College for Young Ladies - afternoon tea, white gloves, supervised gymnastics - and the overwhelming physical presence of the Australian bush, personified by the Hanging Rock itself, with a strong sense of evil which is all the more powerful for never being explained. Character is not her strong point, and many of the girls (and, indeed, boys) are practically cardboard cutouts, but the brooding electricity of the atmosphere is impressive.
Arminta Wallace